The post-performance panel discussion, entitled "Oil Production in Developing Nations" will feature 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"; and Dr. Michael Ross, Associate Professor in the UCLA Department of Political Science and author of "Oil, Islam and Women."
Playwright Hoyle will also take part in the talkback addressing issues of oil politics in Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Sudan. The discussion will be moderated by Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran, correspondent for the "Economist" and co-author of "ZOOM: The Global Race to Fuel the Car of the Future."
Tings Dey Happen began its New York run at Culture Project's downtown home July 26, opened Aug. 7 and was originally scheduled through Sept. 23. It was then extended through Oct. 20 and is now slated for an additional two months of performances.
Tings, which played a six-month, sold-out run in San Francisco last winter, is a work of journalistic theatre culled from Hoyle's experiences in Nigeria while he was a Fulbright scholar studying oil politics. In the sociopolitical solo play, Nigerian warlords, prostitutes, oil workers, militants and the American Ambassador to Nigeria come to life, depicting the political temperature in what has been dubbed "the New Middle East." Charlie Varon directs.
Nigeria holds a key to the American oil crisis, already supplying ten percent of our nation's oil supply. According to press notes, "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." Playwright Dan Hoyle's credits include Circumnavigator and Florida 2004: The Big Bummer.
Tickets for Tings Dey Happen at The Culture Project, 55 Mercer Street, are available by calling (212) 352-3101 or by visiting www.cultureproject.org
