Barry John (theatre director)
Encyclopedia
Barry John is a British born, India
n theatre director and teacher, who was the Founder-Director of 'Theatre Action Group' (TAG) (1973–99), one of the early theatre group based in Delhi. In 1997, he launched Imago Media Company, along with Sanjay Sujitabh, and also started Imago Acting School in Delhi, both of which moved to Mumbai in March 2007. The school also got him recognition, as some of the alumni went on become Bollywood
actors, including Shahrukh Khan
, Manoj Bajpai
, Samir Soni
and Shiney Ahuja
, as well as Hollywood stars like Freida Pinto
.
He is based in India since 1969. After shifting base to Mumbai his acting school was opened in Mumbai as 'The Barry John Acting Studio', situated in Andheri.
He was awarded the 1993 Sangeet Natak Akademi Award
for Theatre Direction by Sangeet Natak Akademi
, India's National Academy for Music, Dance and Theatre, and also the Sahitya Kala Parishad Award.
of West Midlands
county, England
. His father, an engineer by profession, joined the navy during the world War II and his mother was a home-maker, and his younger sister was Christine.
By the age of 12, he had started selling newspapers, and pursued theatre in the evenings. AT 15, his father fixed up a job for him at the factory where he worked. After finishing his schooling, he moved to London, but unable to find place in acting schools, he joined Leeds University at Leeds, West Yorkshire
. here he trained become a theatre teacher, for three years under John Hutchson, the head of department.
, where he stayed for the next two years, teaching English during the day at Regional Institute of English on Cunningham Road, and doing radio programmes. Evenings were for amateur theatre, with Bangalore Amateur Dramatics Society and the Bangalore Little Theatre. After arriving in Delhi in 1970, he joined the 'Yatrik' theatre group. staying at the YMCA hostel and he started working as a freelance teacher in schools and colleges.
In 1973, he founded the Theatre Action Group (TAG), with Siddharth Basu, Roshan Seth
, Lilette Dubey, Mira Nair, Ravi Dubey, Manohar Singh
, Khalid Tyabji, Pamela Rooks
, Surekha Sikri
and Pankaj Kapoor
; the group performed various forms of till 1977, when he joined as a faculty of the National School of Drama
, Delhi
(1977–80), and later became the Founder-Director of the NSD’s Theatre in Education Company (TIE)(1989–92). He has been theatre workshops ever since and in 1997, opened the 'Imago Acting School' in Delhi.
He also appeared in a few films, like Satyajit Ray
s Shatranj Ke Khilari
(Chess Players) (1977), Richard Attenborough
's, Gandhi
(1982), Massey Sahib (1985). He also acting several of his own productions, as well as that other director, including Roysten Abel's Othello a Play in Black and White . His recent film is Tere Bin Laden
in which he is an American security general.
In 2007, he shifted to Mumbai, where his acting school was opened as 'Barry John Acting Studio', in the same year, he also published a book “Playing for Real”, published by Macmillan, a chronicle of 178 drama exercises for children, and co-authored by Rajan Chawla and Cathy Yogin, students of his Imago Theatre in Education Company,
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
n theatre director and teacher, who was the Founder-Director of 'Theatre Action Group' (TAG) (1973–99), one of the early theatre group based in Delhi. In 1997, he launched Imago Media Company, along with Sanjay Sujitabh, and also started Imago Acting School in Delhi, both of which moved to Mumbai in March 2007. The school also got him recognition, as some of the alumni went on become Bollywood
Bollywood
Bollywood is the informal term popularly used for the Hindi-language film industry based in Mumbai , Maharashtra, India. The term is often incorrectly used to refer to the whole of Indian cinema; it is only a part of the total Indian film industry, which includes other production centers producing...
actors, including Shahrukh Khan
Shahrukh Khan
Shahrukh Khan , often credited as Shah Rukh Khan, is an Indian film actor, as well as a film producer and television host. Often referred to as "the King of Bollywood", Khan has acted in over 70 Hindi films....
, Manoj Bajpai
Manoj Bajpai
Manoj Bajpai , also credited as Manoj Bajpayee, is an Indian film actor, known for playing offbeat and unconventional roles. He first shot into fame with his breakthrough role in Ram Gopal Varma's 1998 film Satya.-Early life:...
, Samir Soni
Samir Soni
Samir Soni is an Indian actor and a model who appears in Bollywood films.- Biography :Soni was born on 1970 to a Punjabi Hindu family in London, United Kingdom and attended school at St. Xavier's School, Delhi...
and Shiney Ahuja
Shiney Ahuja
Shiney Ahuja is an Indian actor who won the Filmfare Best Debut Award for Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi in 2006.- Early life :...
, as well as Hollywood stars like Freida Pinto
Freida Pinto
Freida Pinto is an Indian actress and model best known for her portrayal of Latika in the 2008 Academy Award winning film Slumdog Millionaire, for which she won a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture...
.
He is based in India since 1969. After shifting base to Mumbai his acting school was opened in Mumbai as 'The Barry John Acting Studio', situated in Andheri.
He was awarded the 1993 Sangeet Natak Akademi Award
Sangeet Natak Akademi Award
Sangeet Natak Akademi Puraskar is an award given by the Sangeet Natak Akademi, India's National Academy of Music, Dance & Drama. It is the highest Indian recognition given to practicing artists. The award consists since 2003 of Rs. 50,000, a citation, an angavastram , and a tamrapatra...
for Theatre Direction by Sangeet Natak Akademi
Sangeet Natak Akademi
Sangeet Natak Akademi is the national level academy for performing arts set up by the Government of India.-History:...
, India's National Academy for Music, Dance and Theatre, and also the Sahitya Kala Parishad Award.
Early life and education
Barry John was born in 1944, in the industrial city of CoventryCoventry
Coventry is a city and metropolitan borough in the county of West Midlands in England. Coventry is the 9th largest city in England and the 11th largest in the United Kingdom. It is also the second largest city in the English Midlands, after Birmingham, with a population of 300,848, although...
of West Midlands
West Midlands (county)
The West Midlands is a metropolitan county in western central England with a 2009 estimated population of 2,638,700. It came into existence as a metropolitan county in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972, formed from parts of Staffordshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire. The...
county, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. His father, an engineer by profession, joined the navy during the world War II and his mother was a home-maker, and his younger sister was Christine.
By the age of 12, he had started selling newspapers, and pursued theatre in the evenings. AT 15, his father fixed up a job for him at the factory where he worked. After finishing his schooling, he moved to London, but unable to find place in acting schools, he joined Leeds University at Leeds, West Yorkshire
West Yorkshire
West Yorkshire is a metropolitan county within the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England with a population of 2.2 million. West Yorkshire came into existence as a metropolitan county in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972....
. here he trained become a theatre teacher, for three years under John Hutchson, the head of department.
Career
Deeply influnced by India, and its culture, during the Hippie era, he even delved into the Upanishads. Then in 1968, Pandit Ravi Shankar staged a concert at the Coventry Cathedral, a few days later, he saw an ad in the newspapers for a teaching job in India, to which he applied. Thus at age of 22 he landed in BangaloreBangalore
Bengaluru , formerly called Bengaluru is the capital of the Indian state of Karnataka. Bangalore is nicknamed the Garden City and was once called a pensioner's paradise. Located on the Deccan Plateau in the south-eastern part of Karnataka, Bangalore is India's third most populous city and...
, where he stayed for the next two years, teaching English during the day at Regional Institute of English on Cunningham Road, and doing radio programmes. Evenings were for amateur theatre, with Bangalore Amateur Dramatics Society and the Bangalore Little Theatre. After arriving in Delhi in 1970, he joined the 'Yatrik' theatre group. staying at the YMCA hostel and he started working as a freelance teacher in schools and colleges.
In 1973, he founded the Theatre Action Group (TAG), with Siddharth Basu, Roshan Seth
Roshan Seth
Roshan Seth is an Indian-born British actor, who appears mainly in British and American films. He is known for his critically acclaimed performances in the films Gandhi, Mississippi Masala, Not Without My Daughter, My Beautiful Laundrette, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and Such a Long...
, Lilette Dubey, Mira Nair, Ravi Dubey, Manohar Singh
Manohar Singh
Manohar Singh was a distinguished Indian theatre actor-director and a character actor in Hindi films. He is best known for his performances in films such as Party and Daddy...
, Khalid Tyabji, Pamela Rooks
Pamela Rooks
Pamela Rooks was an Indian film director and screenwriter, most known for the film, Train to Pakistan set in Partition of India and based on Khushwant Singh’s novel, it was screened at several international film festivals...
, Surekha Sikri
Surekha Sikri
Surekha Sikri or Surekha Sikri Rege is Indian film, theatre and TV actor. She has won the National Film Award for Best Supporting Actress twice, for her role in Tamas in 1988 and for Mammo in 1995.-Early life and background:...
and Pankaj Kapoor
Pankaj Kapoor
Pankaj Kapur is an Indian theatre, television and film actor from Ludhiana, Punjab, India. He has appeared in several television serials and films. His most acclaimed film roles to date have been that of Dr...
; the group performed various forms of till 1977, when he joined as a faculty of the National School of Drama
National School of Drama
National School of Drama is a theatre training institute situated at New Delhi, India, established . It is an autonomous organization under Ministry of Culture, Government of India. It was set up in 1959 by the Sangeet Natak Akademi, and became an independent school in 1975...
, Delhi
Delhi
Delhi , officially National Capital Territory of Delhi , is the largest metropolis by area and the second-largest by population in India, next to Mumbai. It is the eighth largest metropolis in the world by population with 16,753,265 inhabitants in the Territory at the 2011 Census...
(1977–80), and later became the Founder-Director of the NSD’s Theatre in Education Company (TIE)(1989–92). He has been theatre workshops ever since and in 1997, opened the 'Imago Acting School' in Delhi.
He also appeared in a few films, like Satyajit Ray
Satyajit Ray
Satyajit Ray was an Indian Bengali filmmaker. He is regarded as one of the greatest auteurs of 20th century cinema. Ray was born in the city of Kolkata into a Bengali family prominent in the world of arts and literature...
s Shatranj Ke Khilari
Shatranj Ke Khilari
Shatranj Ke Khilari is a 1977 Indian film by Bengali director Satyajit Ray, based on Munshi Premchand's short story of the same name. Amjad Khan plays the role of Avadh king Wajid Ali Shah, and Richard Attenborough plays the role of General James Outram...
(Chess Players) (1977), Richard Attenborough
Richard Attenborough
Richard Samuel Attenborough, Baron Attenborough , CBE is a British actor, director, producer and entrepreneur. As director and producer he won two Academy Awards for the 1982 film Gandhi...
's, Gandhi
Gandhi (film)
Gandhi is a 1982 biographical film based on the life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, who led the nonviolent resistance movement against British colonial rule in India during the first half of the 20th century. The film was directed by Richard Attenborough and stars Ben Kingsley as Gandhi. They both...
(1982), Massey Sahib (1985). He also acting several of his own productions, as well as that other director, including Roysten Abel's Othello a Play in Black and White . His recent film is Tere Bin Laden
Tere Bin Laden
Tere Bin Laden is a 2010 Bollywood satire film produced by Walkwater Media and written and directed by Abhishek Sharma. The film stars Pakistani pop singer Ali Zafar in the lead role as an ambitious young reporter, who, in his desperation to migrate to the U.S., makes a fake Osama bin Laden video...
in which he is an American security general.
In 2007, he shifted to Mumbai, where his acting school was opened as 'Barry John Acting Studio', in the same year, he also published a book “Playing for Real”, published by Macmillan, a chronicle of 178 drama exercises for children, and co-authored by Rajan Chawla and Cathy Yogin, students of his Imago Theatre in Education Company,
Alumni
- Shahrukh KhanShahrukh KhanShahrukh Khan , often credited as Shah Rukh Khan, is an Indian film actor, as well as a film producer and television host. Often referred to as "the King of Bollywood", Khan has acted in over 70 Hindi films....
- Shiney AhujaShiney AhujaShiney Ahuja is an Indian actor who won the Filmfare Best Debut Award for Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi in 2006.- Early life :...
- Samir AroraSamir AroraSamir Arora is best known as the founder, CEO and Chairman of the web design pioneering company NetObjects, Inc. from 1995 to 2001, and also as the co-founder, CEO and Chairman of Glam Media since 2003. Samir Arora holds 13 US software patents as co-inventor.- Education :Samir Arora grew up in New...
- Freida PintoFreida PintoFreida Pinto is an Indian actress and model best known for her portrayal of Latika in the 2008 Academy Award winning film Slumdog Millionaire, for which she won a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture...
- Mohit SehgalMohit SehgalMohit Sehgal is an Indian television actor, best known for his role as Samrat in the series Miley Jab Hum Tum on STAR One.- Career :...
- Vinit Kumar
- Rana DaggubatiRana DaggubatiRana Daggubati is an Indian actor. Better known as Rana, he was born on 14 December 1984 in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. He is the son of film producer D. Suresh Babu, the latter being the elder son of D. Ramanaidu. Venkatesh is D. Ramanaidu's younger son. Rana is also nephew of another Tollywood actor...
- Harshvardhan Rane
Filmography
- Shatranj Ke KhilariShatranj Ke KhilariShatranj Ke Khilari is a 1977 Indian film by Bengali director Satyajit Ray, based on Munshi Premchand's short story of the same name. Amjad Khan plays the role of Avadh king Wajid Ali Shah, and Richard Attenborough plays the role of General James Outram...
(Chess Players) (1977) - GandhiGandhi (film)Gandhi is a 1982 biographical film based on the life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, who led the nonviolent resistance movement against British colonial rule in India during the first half of the 20th century. The film was directed by Richard Attenborough and stars Ben Kingsley as Gandhi. They both...
(1982) - Massey Sahib (1985)
- Thanks MaaThanks maaThanks Maa is a Hindi Bollywood film directed by Débutante director Irfan Kamal, distributed by Sony Pictures Entertainment, India. The film focuses on Child abandonment Issue in India...
(2010) - Tere Bin LadenTere Bin LadenTere Bin Laden is a 2010 Bollywood satire film produced by Walkwater Media and written and directed by Abhishek Sharma. The film stars Pakistani pop singer Ali Zafar in the lead role as an ambitious young reporter, who, in his desperation to migrate to the U.S., makes a fake Osama bin Laden video...
(2010) - The Great Indian ButterflyThe Great Indian ButterflyThe Indian Butterfly is a 2010 Bollywood film, written and directed by Sarthak Dasgupta. It is about finding peace, love, happiness in our life, which is within lies within our self according to the movie. Its a story of a typical modern class Indian couple and their journey to Goa where they had...
(2010)