Encore, Sir John

BARRY John Superstar? No exaggeration, that. Not for the likes of Shah Rukh Khan, Raghuvir Yadav and Manoj Bajpai who trained under him during their Theatre Action Group (TAG) days. Not for the disadvantaged children whose lives he has brightened up through theatre therapy. Not for twenty something Rajan, the runaway lad whose education he's sponsored since 1987, the year he founded the Nukkad Society for street children. Not for all those theatre buffs who admire the elegance and integrity of his stage productions. What about Barry John himself? He is one of India's best known drama gurus, but he couldn't much care for such quixotic appellations.

In fact, he hates hype. so his acting school, coming up in Film City, Noida, promises no instant results. "Anyone who expects a magical box of tricks will be disappointed," says the 51-year-old British national who landed in India in 1968, never to return. "It's a place where there'll rigour in training, not false dreams of mega-stardom," says long-time TAG associate Siddhartha Basu.

The only tricks Barry will perform at Imago Action School, formally opening on July 15, pertain to the magic of stagecraft and the nuances of action. The school's name itself resonates with the possibilities that its unassuming founder is set to explore. Imago (pronounced im-ah-go) is "the final transformation of an insect into its mature form". The school's red-and-black logo is woven around a butterfly the ultimate example of an image.

Will the school spearhead a transformation? It will certainly plug a huge lacuna, says Barry. "Aspiring engineers and doctors invest time, effort and money in extended courses. But any Amar, Akbar or Anthony can stroll on to the Indian stage without even hearing the word training," he laments. The National School of Drama (NSD), Barry feels, isn't quite serving its purpose. "It is inward-looking, divorced from the reality outside its walls, not bothered about what its students do after graduating," says the man who taught western drama at NSD in the late '70s. Will Image be an alternative, then? "Not in size and ambition, but certainly in methodology." Teaching is Barry's forte. In the UK, he trained as a drama teacher and when he arrived in India it was as a volunteer to train language teachers at the Regional Institute of English, Bangalore. "I've always been more active on the education side," says Barry. Besides innumerable theatre workshops, he has conducted elaborate training sessions for his entire cast whenever he's staged a musical. "Image, he says, "is a formalisation of what one has been doing informally."

The idea germinated when frlmstar Anupam Kher offered him the directorship of his proposed drama institute in Mumbai. "I did not want to leave Delhi, where my roots had grown so deep," says Barry. His name commands respect in Mumbai. Says Divya Seth, who worked with TAG for five years before shifting base to Mumbai: "The TAG stamp counts. Nobody in Mumbai asks you to go through auditions. Your expertise is taken for granted."

RESPECT, sadly, doesn't translate into funds. So Barry, armed with his own savings and a contribution hem set designer Sanjay Sujitabh, is starting small. To begin with, he will be the school's one-man staff. A hunt is, meanwhile, on for students who can become apprentice-teachers. "We're lucky to have this kind of space," says Barry. In Film City's Brahma Studio complex, Image operates on two floors. On the ground floor, beyond the reception foyer, is a 50 sq ft studio space for physical exercises, movement and dance classes and informal performances for the public. In a large basement is an acting studio and a multipurpose classroom. The monthly rent is Rs 30,000 plus overheads (electricity, telephones, office staff). So the fee for a full-time three-month course will be a trifle high: Rs 20,000 per student. "I'd need 15 to 20 students to keep the school going. To make it financially viable, I might have to take in 25 to 30 students but I'm not too keen," says Barry.

Life in India hasn't been easy, but Barry wouldn't be happier anywhere else. He attained adulthood during the Swinging Sixties. It was the Flower Power era. "We were fiercely anti-establishment. We abhorred western materialism," he recalls. So India was the country to head for. But Barry wasn't a hippie. He didn't end up in Goa or Manali, but found his way to Bangalore. Strangely, all the values he ran away from have gained ground in India today. "My history has caught up with me," he says.

His father, a factory worker in Coventry, belonged to a Welsh coalmining family. "I was a war baby born in 1946, the result of my father's victory celebrations with my mother," says Barry He was academically inclined, his parents wanted him to leave school. The rift with his family grew. The battle wasn't only at the personal level. It was ideological, too. "My parents had lost everything (Coventry was heavily bombed). They were rebuilding and all they were interested in was money. I revolted." He read the Upanishads in college, where he also directed Kalidas' Shakunralam.

The Bangalore sojourn was initially for only one year. That got extended to two. During that period, Barry did amateur theatre with the Bangalore Little Theatre. A meeting with Joy Michael of Delhi's Yatrik Theatre Group led to a shift to the capital in 1970. In 1973, TAG was born. "The first five years were TAG'S golden era," reminisces Barry. "The plays were of a very high quality. Had these guys been in the West, they could've competed with the best."

Barry John's career today adds up to over 100 stage productions, both in Hindi and English, besides sporadic roles in films like Satyajit Ray's Shatranj Ke Khilari and Pradip Krishen's Massey Sahib. Jesus Christ Superstar, Equus, Baghdad Ka Gulam, Ek Aur Durghatna, and Blood Brothers have all been great successes. But two plays Barry is particularly proud of are Marat Sade, made during the Emergency, and Kidstuf, staged at the end of a one-year theatre workshop in St Xavier's School. While the former dealt with Marquis de Sade, the 18th century French soldier-novelist who, incarcerated for his sexual excesses, did plays in prison, the latter was a powerful indictment of the education system.

The Barry John 'school of acting' has served theatre and cinema with distinction over the years. And now, Image could well show the way as theatre, especially in Delhi, flounders in a depression far deeper than anything Barry John has seen "in the nearly 30 years that I have been in India".