'Tings Dey Happen' Hosts Oil Panel Discussion 11/30

Culture Project has announced that its production of Tings Dey Happen – the acclaimed solo show that explores oil politics in Africa's Niger Delta, written and performed by Dan Hoyle and developed with and directed by Charlie Varon – will host a panel discussion entitled "Oil Production in Developing Nations" following the 8PM performance on Friday, November 30.  The discussion will be moderated by award-winning Economist correspondent and co-author of ZOOM: The Global Race to Fuel the Car of the Future, Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran.

A panel comprised of oil experts will explore the issues raised in Hoyle's acclaimed show, as a catalyst to discuss how oil politics affects countries around the world, including Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Sudan.  Scheduled participants include: Nicholas Kozloff, senior research fellow for the Council on Hemispheric Affairs and author of Hugo Chavez: Oil, Politics, and the Challenge to the US; Ramond J. Learsy, author of Over a Barrel: Breaking Oil's Grip on Our Future; Dr. Michael Ross, Associate Professor in the UCLA Department of Political Science and author of "Oil, Islam and Women," published in the American Political Science Review and Tings Dey Happen author and star Dan Hoyle.

"In Tings Dey Happen, Dan 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.  Having spent a year in Nigeria as a Fulbright scholar studying oil politics, he brings to the stage one of the most important geopolitical stories of our time.  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," explain press notes.

Tings Dey Happen officially opened on August 7 and quickly became one of the most talked-about and enthusiastically received Off Broadway offerings of the season. Tings Dey Happen premiered in December, 2006 at The Marsh performance space in San Francisco and ran for six sold-out months.