Tings Dey Happen, on Nigeria & Oil Security, Starts 7/26

Culture Project has announced that the acclaimed new play, Tings Dey Happen, written and performed by Dan Hoyle, will have its New York premiere at Culture Project's SoHo space (55 Mercer Street) this summer.  Preview performances begin July 26, with an official opening night set for Tuesday, August 7.  Directed by Charlie Varon, this limited engagement runs through Sunday, September 23. 

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," state press notes.

Mr. Buchman stated, "This play involves a situation that interests and affects us all.  It would be really easy to create a boring or sentimental play about this subject.  However, Dan Hoyle's genius is that he has imagined a way to engage, entertain and, at times, mesmerize, all without compromising the depth or seriousness of this important issue."

Tings Dey Happen premiered in December, 2006 at The Marsh performance space in San Francisco and ended its run this weekend (June 24) after six sold-out months and unanimous rave reviews.  "In contrast to his previous shows (Circumnavigator and Florida 2004: The Big Bummer), Hoyle never portrays himself in Tings Dey Happen.  Instead, he allows the characters he met to tell their stories of survival on the West African frontier and the audience to experience the intensity and dynamism of Nigeria as he did.  In the process, we are forced to consider all the hard questions in a new way: should we accept corruption and oppression in deference to the sovereignty of the 'African Way'?  Can the West help Africa, or are all our interventions fated to compound the problem?  And what happens when there's no discernible choice between wrong and right?

For more than a decade, Culture Project has presented award-winning theatre at the intersection between politics and culture, bringing essential social, political and moral issues to life on a national stage. The Exonerated, Sarah Jones' Bridge & Tunnel, Guantanamo, AMAJUBA: Like Doves We Rise, many works through the IMPACT festival 2006 and, most recently, Lawrence Wright's My Trip To Al-Qaeda received their national premieres at Culture Project.  They are currently presenting their annual multi-disciplinary event Women Center Stage, which features women artists whose work calls attention to global human struggles."

Tickets are priced at $35 and $50 and are available by calling 212-352-3101 or visiting www.cultureproject.org.

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