From Wingfield to Wolfville
The popular Wingfield series carries on this week during Valley Summer Theatre’s eighth season.
This year’s rendition features Rod Beattie in Wingfield’s Inferno with four performances Aug. 12–14 in Wolfville.
In this amusing and wry-tinged tale, a devastating fire at the Orange Hall in Larkspur leaves it a smouldering ruin. Walt
Wingfield leads the charge to get it rebuilt, but lighting a fire under his fellow committee members proves a daunting task. Is it courage they lack, or is the devil in the details?
Beattie - as Walt Wingfield, and everyone else - is one of the most versatile and respected actors in Canadian theatre. A veteran of the Stratford Festival, Beattie’s extensive credits span radio, television, and stage, in- cluding performances at the National Arts Centre and London’s Grand Theatre.
Playwright Dan Needles created the character of Walt Wingfield - a retired stockbrokerturned-farmer
who told about his adventures on the farm in weekly letters to the editor - while he was working as the editor of an Ontario newspaper. Needles drew from these letters to create the plays in the Wingfield series. His novelization of all seven Wingfield plays, Wingfield’s World, was released in 2011. In 2014, he was appointed Member of the Order of Canada.
Director Douglas Beattie’s association with Needles goes back to childhood summers spent on the farm. In addition to heading the Wingfield team, Doug is an independent producer and has been a guest director at the Stratford Festival, the Belfry Theatre, the Blyth Festival, London’s Grand Theatre and others. He was consultant to Primedia’s television production of Letter From Wingfield Farm, winner of the 1991 Gemini Award for best performing arts program.