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Dan Needles marking 30 years of ‘Progress’

January 19, 2017   ·   0 Comments

Following the Christmas/New Year break, Theatre Orangeville’s next production for this year’s season is Wingfield’s Progress by Dan Needles, which opens on February 2.

“It’s extraordinary,” declared Mr. Needles, “I wrote Wingfield’s Progress 30 years ago and it’s still going strong. It’s the anniversary – I wrote it just about this time of year in 1987.”

The first three of the Wingfield plays were initially produced at the old Orange Hall in Rosemont.

Mr. Needles’ brother Reed opened with the original play, “Letter from Wingfield Farm,” but, as Dan said: “My brother bolted – Rod [Beattie] took it on and never let it go.”

The Beattie brothers, Douglas and Rod, were childhood friends with the Needles. “The connection between our families goes back 60 years,” said Mr. Needles.

So, Rod Beattie performed “Progress”, the second of the seven-play series in Rosemont. “My mother ran the lighting. She had dimmer panel and the thing got so hot that it started to melt the plastic knobs, so she ran it with vice grips and oven mitts. Rod was doing it with gritted teeth.”

Once Mr. Needles had written the third play, Wingfield’s Folly, they thought that was “a nice body of work.” As it happened, over the years since then, he went on to write another four: “but if it’s a trilogy, we didn’t know what the word was for seven,” he commented humorously.

He related a little of his life outside of the theatre: “I’ve been out speaking – I’m a big noise in the swine circuit. If you have pigs, I’m a household name [speaking] with Farm Smart in Guelph. I just yap ‘farmer thinking’ and old rural community.”

In fact, Mr. Needles is a well known speaker for conferences and events across the country, bringing his observations about the way the old rural community sees the modern world. Over the last 30 years and from “over 1,000 platforms,” he gives his version of rural thinking to the delight of audiences.

“I’m really more of a vacuum cleaner than a writer,” he tells them by way of explaining his self-appointed custodianship of farmer wisdom and way of speaking. “It’s up to me to preserve every nugget.”

To us, he passed the latest comment: “So, what’re you doin’, Danny, are ya still writing friction?”

The cornerstone of the Wingfield series is the ongoing story of Walt Wingfield who gives up a high powered job in the city to purchase and live on a hundred-acre farm where he plans to stay and earn a living. In the course of the individual plays, the various characters that become part of Walt’s life offer advice and, sometimes, rescue. The stories are presented in the form of letters to the editor from Walt to the local paper.

What else makes the plays such a wonder is the almost magical performance of Rod Beattie, playing all the characters. Unlike any other one-person show ever produced, Mr. Beattie’s portrayal of the truly hilarious oddball people in the Needles’ plays has to be seen to be believed.

Confronted now, as we all are, with modern change to communications, Mr. Needles was critical: “Social media is a total fraud. My own kids have come back to the community to find real community and the sense of the narrative that comes out of these hills.”

“When I wrote these plays, Theatre Orangeville didn’t exist. Dufferin Museum didn’t exist. Nor In the Hills,” the quarterly that carries his columns today.

“It’s grown into a complex community. It’s filed with possibilities. But we’re still struggling with the Canadian winter – there still needs to be six cords of wood stacked against the wall. In some ways, nothing has changed. The play captures Walt’s version about what the community is. Plays are supposed to capture a moment in time.”

He says Theatre Orangeville “is very close to my heart, because everything I’ve ever written has been produced there. I love the Orangeville audiences because I can count on their honesty. One farmer came to see a play and he says to me, ‘It was very good, Danny. It was a bit long.’ ”

He told us that Artistic Director David Nairn is always impatient and very demanding. “Your public needs something new; he’s in the Caribbean but he’s still pushing me.”

Then, he admitted, “We’re working on a secret project.”

Wingfield’s Progress is just as relevant as it was 30 years ago, “because they’re still building condos on the 7th Line. Walt would have been just as irate as he was 30 years ago.”

He added, “Our love affair with the global market has waned and now we are turning to our own neighbourhood. They capture something of that.”

“Progress is one of my favourite plays,” he reflected. “I got it right.”

Wingfield’s Progress is on at Theatre Orangeville opening with the preview on Thursday, February 2, with opening night February 3.

Tickets and information can be obtained at the box office, 87 Broadway, or the tourist information centre on Buena Vista Drive at Highway 10; by calling 519-942-3423, or online at tickets@theatreorangeville.com

And you can still buy a three-play subscription to make sure you catch more fun, pay a little less for your tickets and support the theatre.

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