CapeCodToday Obituaries

Dan Walker, one of the original founders of WHAT, dead at 75

Former actor, director and teacher, founded WHAT 25 years ago

WELLFLEET -  Daniel Walker, a former actor, director and teacher who 25 years ago joined five others in creating the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater (WHAT), died on Friday, March 6, 2009 at Cape Cod Hospital.  He was 75.

Dan, as he was known to friends and colleagues, had a lifelong connection to Cape Cod.  His parents, Adelaide and Charles R. Walker, Jr., were central figures in the Outer Cape literary and artistic community that included John Dos Passos, Edmund Wilson and Mary McCarthy and, he had been spending at least part of every year in Wellfleet since he was a boy.  He and his wife, Dina Harris, permanently located to Wellfleet in 2004.

Dan Walker. Photo by Rusty Funnell.

Dan’s theater career on Cape Cod began long before directing WHAT’s very first show, a production of Ionesco’s Rhinoceros, which opened on July, 31, 1985 on the night of a Blue Moon.  His first acting role came when he was 6 and played Jack Frost in a Christmas play at the Wellfleet Elementary School—and he was hooked.  Theater became his passion, whether on the Cape during summers or while away at boarding school.  He was directing and acting in plays, some of which he wrote himself, enlisting friends in Wellfleet and Truro to establish a theater company to perform them.  The group called themselves “The Truro Troopers.” Among them was Joan Chandler, who went on to co-star in Alfred Hitchcock’s film, Rope.

At 16, Dan worked as an intern at the Cape Playhouse in Dennis.  There he worked with luminaries such as Bea Lillie and Gertrude Lawrence, and he learned stagecraft working with Herbert Senn and Helen Ponds, the Cape Playhouse’s brilliant scene designers.

Dan earned a BFA in Drama at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh and, after serving in the peacetime Navy in Boston, he ventured to New York to pursue his lifelong dream of a theater career.  He always returned to the Cape when he could to see plays performed and designed by former colleagues, and visit with family and friends.

He acted on Broadway with Gene Hackman, acted and sang parts in regional theater, summer stock, and children’s theater—where his signature role was The Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz.   Dan also traveled the globe for more than a year as part of the Theater Guild American Repertory Company.  That was a 26-city tour through Europe and the Middle East with stars such as Helen Hayes and June Havoc and also James Broderick, Matthew’s father, who was Dan’s constant traveling chess partner.

“I’ve had a good run,” he said to his oncologist when learning 15 months ago that he had inoperable cancer.

To say the theater coursed through his blood would be an understatement.  His mother, an actress, was nine months pregnant with Dan but still attended Tobacco Road, fearing it would close. That experience produced false labor – and also a false sense of worry as Tobacco Road went on to run longer, until then, than any play on Broadway.

All of Dan’s family is in “the business.” Dan met his wife, the designer and playwright Dina Harris, when both were working on a pair of horror movies.  One, The Horror of Party Beach, was so bad that it has achieved cult status and is featured in Medved and Dreyfuss’ book “_.”  The other film, The Curse of the Living Corpse, was Roy Scheider’s first film.

In the mid-1970s, Dan took a position as Drama Director at The Brearley School in New York City.  There he taught acting and stagecraft for 19 years, directing hundreds of plays and dozens of musicals.  His students were the daughters of people such as Leonard Bernstein, Calvin Trillin, Itzhak Perlman and Frank Loesser among other notables. Those he trained include Diane Paulis, who last year was named Artistic Director of the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge.

It was while Dan was teaching at Brearley that he helped to found WHAT.  He served on the WHAT board of directors until his death so that he could continue to have a voice in the theater he helped to start.

Dan was more than his accomplishments, of course.  He was a big-hearted man with a legendary sense of humor that permeated both his private and professional life.  That was never more obvious than at his funeral, where several lifelong friends recalled a larger-than-life personality who was at once creative and fun loving.

“I’ve had a good run,” he said to his oncologist when learning 15 months ago that he had inoperable cancer.

He is survived by his wife Dina Harris, who will remain in Wellfleet, and two children.  His son Sheafe Walker was a sound designer for many Off Broadway shows as well as at WHAT.  He is now an attorney specializing in entertainment law.  His daughter, Daisy Walker, is a theater director who has worked on Broadway, at Radio City Music Hall, and in numerous regional theaters.  An associate director for the Broadway hit Jersey Boys, she last year took time off from that job to direct Ride at WHAT, and this year she will be returning to Wellfleet to direct The Little Dog Laughed on the Julie Harris Stage.   His wife and two children were by his side when he succumbed to pneumonia on March 6th.

A small funeral was held Tuesday March 10th at the Church of St. Mary’s of the Harbor, in Provincetown, and officiated by the Reverend John F.Smith. The Nickerson Funeral home in Wellfleet made arrangements for cremation.

WHAT plans to hold a Memorial for Dan at the Julie Harris Stage at 1pm on August 15th.