Rod Beattie (born 1948) is a Canadian actor who is best known for performing the Wingfield Series of plays by Dan Needles. In these plays Beattie plays all the characters, employing changes in voice or facial expression to denote which character he is playing. He has appeared in productions of these plays across Canada and on TV, and in 1991-2 he won the Dora Mavor Moore Award for best actor in leading role for his performances in the first three Wingfield plays.[1]
Beattie has appeared at the Stratford Festival for 15 seasons. Other productions include The Loveliest and Sylvia in Victoria, The Crucible and Blessings in Disguise in Manitoba, Oleanna at the National Arts Centre opposite Sandra Oh, and Love Letters opposite wife Martha Henry in an Ontario tour. He also appeared in the movie The Wars.[2]
On January 14, 2010, Walt Wingfield passed another milestone in his remarkable career. The opening night performance of Wingfield Lost and Found at the Citadel Theatre in Edmonton AB was Rod Beattie's 4,000th performance of a Wingfield play in a little over twenty-five years.
From the Orange Hall in Rosemont, Ontario, (August, 1984) to Edmonton (January, 2010), with opening nights in 1985 (Letter From Wingfield Farm), in 1987 (Wingfield's Progress), in 1990 (Wingfield's Folly), in 1997 (Wingfield Unbound), in 2001 (Wingfield On Ice), in 2005 (Wingfield's Inferno) and in 2009 (Wingfield Lost and Found), Walt and Rod have delighted capacity audiences across Canada in most major regional theatres, including Victoria's Belfry, the Vancouver Playhouse, Edmonton's Citadel, Theatre Calgary, the Globe in Regina, the Manitoba Theatre Centre in Winnipeg, the Grand in London, the Stratford Festival, Theatre Aquarius in Hamilton, the Royal Alexandra Theatre and Canadian Stage Company in Toronto, Theatre New Brunswick and the Neptune in Halifax, as well as hundreds of smaller venues.
They've also taken part in seasons at Cincinnati's Playhouse in the Park and the Asolo Theater in Sarasota, Florida. The first three Wingfield plays were broadcast on CBC Radio's Morningside; a TV version of Letter From Wingfield Farm (produced by Primedia Productions) won the 1991 "Gemini" (Canadian TV) Award for Best Performing Arts Program; and in November, 1998, a series of thirty half-hour TV episodes, entitled Wingfield, produced by Norflicks Productions, made its CBC debut. The series currently airs on Bravo! Canada.
Rod Beattie has won three best actor awards for his stage performances in the Wingfield plays: The "Sterling" in 1988 (Edmonton, Alberta), the "Dora" in 1992 (Toronto) and the "Critic's Award" in 1995 (Sarasota).