Fairfield University's Quick Center for the Arts and University College present Dan Hoyle's "Tings Dey Happen" November 20-21 | Press Releases

Acclaimed solo show about the politics of oil in the Niger Delta

"Entertaining and eye-opening ... bristles with keen impressions of life and death." - Marilyn Stasio, Variety

Fairfield University's Quick Center for the Arts in collaboration with University College present the award-winning "Tings Dey Happen" written and performed by Dan Hoyle on Thursday and Friday, Nov. 20 and 21 at 8 p.m. in the Wien Experimental Theatre at the Quick Center for the Arts.

In "Tings Dey Happen," Hoyle portrays warlords, militants, oil workers, prostitutes and the American Ambassador to Nigeria, among many others. In this, his third solo show, Hoyle continues to develop his unique form of journalistic theater.

The show originated in San Francisco and ran for six months, winning the 2007 Will Glickman Award for Best New Play in the Bay Area. Hoyle was called, "A remarkable actor ... Here's this skinny white kid from San Francisco playing mostly black Africans, and he actually makes you see these people ... a terrific show ... a rich experience." Chad Jones, Oakland Tribune .

Already supplying 10% of American oil, Nigeria and its surrounding Gulf of Guinea region have been targeted as the "new Middle East" of oil security. However, militants in the oil-producing Niger Delta are blowing up pipelines, warlords are threatening rebellion and oil company employees are being kidnapped with alarming frequency. The audience meets all the characters in Hoyle's ambitious, comic and disturbing new play and it is "Wildly entertaining and the most nuanced and insightful treatment of the complexities of oil politics I have encountered in a decade of covering energy for The Economist ," wrote Vijay Vaitheeswaran.

As a Fulbright scholar, Hoyle spent ten months living in the Niger Delta studying oil politics. During the time spent there in 2005-2006, his sharp ear and astute eye absorbed the flavor, rhythms and dialects of the Nigerian people with whom he came in contact. "Tings Dey Happen" is, as Hoyle states, "a distillation of the Niger Delta as I experienced it. Many of the characters are composites, the monologues a blend of many people's words and my own writing."

Honing the intricacies of situation and relationship for the play was a challenge that Hoyle and his developer and director Charlie Varon welcomed. Hoyle's goal in writing and performing the play, is to escape, as he puts it, "the ideological or conceptual lenses we are familiar with from our newspapers" and provide a visceral experience of the existing volatility, born of greed and a thirst for power, "through the eyes of those who live and work there."

Tickets are $25 and are available online at fairfield.edu/quick or by calling the Box Office at (203) 254-4010. The toll free number is 1-877-ARTS-396. For more information, please visit the website at fairfield.edu/quick.