Dan Needles explores life where city and country meet. He brings to life the wit and wisdom of the old rural community and shows how those voices still whisper in our ears today. For nearly thirty years and almost 5,000 performances his popular Wingfield Farm stage plays have filled theatres across Canada and the United States, including several seasons at the Stratford Festival and with Mirvish Productions in Toronto. A television series based on the Wingfield plays ran on the Bravo channel for several years.
Vintage Canada/Random House released the complete collection of Wingfield stories, Wingfield’s World in 2011. Dan’s latest multi-character play, Ed’s Garage, appeared at London’s Grand Theatre in January 2012 and moved to the Manitoba Theatre Centre in January 2013, and is being developed for television by Less Bland Productions. His new play, The Team on the Hill, premieres at Theatre Orangeville in May 2013.
Dan was nominated three times for the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour and won in 2003 for With Axe and Flask, the local history of his mythical Persephone Township. For the past 15 years he has been a regular columnist with Harrowsmith-Country Life and Country Guide magazines and has just started new columns for Small Farm Canada and three Ontario regional magazines, On The Bay, In the Hills and Watershed.
For 25 years and from more than a thousand platforms, Dan has entertained audiences ranging from the Perth County Holstein Club Ladies Night to the Muck Soils Research Station in Bradford. He has appeared for the Canadian Club, The Canadian Bar Association, Royal Bank, the Royal Winter Fair, the Outdoor Farm Show, the Writer’s Development Trust, the Farm Business Conference, Innovative Farmers of Ontario and dozens of other farm organizations from B.C to the Maritimes.
This year Dan will do the colour commentary for the Canadian Sheep Shearing Championships in Holstein, Ontario with Canadian shearing champion Donnie Metheral. He will also speak for the church service held during the International Plowing Match in Stratford, Ont. In October, he will give the annual Leacock Luncheon address at McGill University in Montreal in his role as ‘Mayor of Mariposa’, an honorary position he has held for the last seven years.
Dan lives with his wife, Heath, on a small farm near Collingwood, Ontario, where they raise ‘street’ sheep, (a very tough breed of sheep developed by his father-in-law for tracking coyotes), rare Canadian Chantecler chickens and four children.
For more information visit www.wingfieldfarm.ca