Tings Dey Happen
The US Department is sending actor Dan Hoyle to Nigeria to do the work normally done by diplomats. Hoyle is to perform his widely celebrated one man play, Tings Dey Happen, for two weeks in October in the cities of Lagos, Calabar, Abuja, Jos and Bauchi.
Looking back at how the play developed, it seems almost inevitable that it would eventually go back to Nigeria.
Hoyle graduated in 2003 from Northwestern University with a dual degree in Performance Studies and History. In 2005 he went to Nigeria as a Fulbright Scholar to study oil conflicts. "Tings Dey Happen," which speaks of Hoyle’s encounters with Nigerians, premiered at San Francisco’s The Marsh in 2007 and received excellent reviews. It then had a long run in New York City.
When the US State Departmen’s Public Affairs Section asked a noted professor--who incidentally had seen the performance in New York--to lecture in Nigeria as part of its anti-corruption public speakers series, he thought it’d be better to send Dan Hoyle.
That’s how things, well, they happened.
Now Hoyle, a young white American, is going back to Nigeria in a daring move, to say the least. He will be showing Nigerians his interpretation of Nigerians and his take on one of that country’s most critical issues: oil ownership. In Nigeria, as opposed to in America, the play performance must measure up against reality.
Intelligently, Hoyle recreates the people he interacted with during his one year as a Fulbright Scholar with skill and, most importantly, empathy. Though the performance is about his own experience, he chooses to play several characters, but not himself. Thus, the audience sees the people Hoyle spoke to and what they told him, but it never hears what he asked or how he reacted to what they had to say.
The most impressive aspect of the play is how with just an accent or a few body movements Hoyle is able to suggest a character’s overall physicality. This comes from Hoyle’s ability to seize the key physical traits of a character and then magnify those same traits on stage. With a single gesture (say, by focusing on how a particular character breathes) Hoyle is able to suggest things like the character’s age, personality and overall disposition.
Witnessing Hoyle move from character to character on the spot, without the help of costumes or props is akin to watching a magic show. A guerilla fighter, an old man, a prostitute, a Scottish worker, a young American, and a kind of tour guide, to name a few, are all brilliantly brought to life that way. Once he gets a character’s physicality, Hoyle interferes little with what the character has to say. The outcome is complex and nuanced--two adjectives seldom linked to political theater.
Tings Dey Happen plays at The Marsh through Sep 26 before going to Nigeria in October. It will then return to The Marsh from Nov 5 through the 28 with, perhaps, an epilogue integrating Hoyle’s new experiences in Nigeria.
