USA: Actor Dan Hoyle performs play about oil and Niger Delta

American actor Dan Hoyle brings his play 'Tings Dey Happen' to a New York stage. The play reflects the year he spent in the Nile Delta as a Fulbright scholar studying oil politics and meeting with everyone from militants, government officials to oil industry executives. American actor and playwright Dan Hoyle has plunged head-long into the oil politics of the Niger Delta with his latest play 'Tings Dey Happen.' Drawn from his experiences as a Fulbright scholar in Nigeria in 2005 and 2006, the one-man play features Hoyle playing various characters drawn from life. Hoyle spent more than a year in the Nile Delta studying the oil industry, getting to know personally the militants, government officials and oil industry workers. Hoyle calls his craft 'journalistic theatre'. "We want to show Nigeria through Nigerian eyes, as much as that's possible by me, a middle-class white guy. You say 'oh, how can you do it?' I say well, that's the challenge that I laid on myself when I went to Nigeria, to understand how Nigerians really think about these issues. So I'd go there, try to walk as they walk and talk as they talk and get on the busses and speak the pidgin English," said Hoyle. Hoyle learned pidgin while living in the delta towns of Membe Creek and Escravos. Violence escalated in early 2006 in the vast Niger Delta oil region when armed groups demanding control over oil revenues and an end to neglect by corrupt politicians started blowing up pipelines and oil wells and kidnapping foreign workers. Their raids shut down at least a fifth of oil output from OPEC member Nigeria, the world's eighth-biggest exporter of crude, pushing up oil prices on world markets. But over time, hostage taking became a commercial enterprise for copy-cat criminals while other forms of violence soared. Politically motivated attacks have subsided since a new president took office on May 29 promising negotiations and efforts to develop the impoverished delta. But the rebel Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, which was behind most of the attacks last year that shut down oil fields, has threatened to resume attacks. Hoyle says he hopes the audience takes away from his play a new attitude toward the African continent. "The main misconception about Africa is that it needs more pity," said Hoyle. "I think Africans don't need pity, they need people to engage with it honestly and seriously. I think it's always 'Oh, poor Africa, isn't' this terrible what's happening,' and it allows people to not really look at what's happening. There are no easy victims and there are no perfect heroes and I think that's what the show tries to display," he added. Sometime in the near future Hoyle says he would like to perform his play in England, where there is a sizeable Nigerian population. Eventually he says he would like to perform it in Nigeria for the people of the Niger Delta from whom he drew the inspiration for the play.

ITN Source | August 17, 2007

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