Barry John

Dr. Barry John (born 1944) is an English-Indian theatre director, actor, and acting coach. Some of his students became Bollywood actors including Shah Rukh Khan, Sanjay Sujitabh, Manoj Bajpayee, Varun Dhawan, Dulquer Salmaan, Kunal Kapoor, Rana Daggubati, Samir Soni and Shiney Ahuja, and actresses, such as Jacqueline Fernandez, Richa Chadha, Dia Mirza, and Plabita Borthakur, as well as Hollywood actors including Freida Pinto and one of the top 10 US media companies CEO Samir Arora. He has been based in India since 1969. After moving to Mumbai his acting school was opened in Mumbai as 'The Barry John Acting Studio' which he quit and started another by the name 'The Free Birds Collective' situated in Andheri, Mumbai.

In January 2025, Barry John was honored with the Padma Shri, India's fourth-highest civilian award, by the Government of India.

He was also 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.

Early life and education Barry John was born in 1944 in Coventry, Warwickshire (now in the West Midlands), England. His father, an engineer by profession, joined the navy during World War II and his mother was a home-maker. He had a younger sister, 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, where he trained to become a theatre teacher.

Based in India since the 1970s, John became an Indian citizen in 2012.

Career

Deeply influenced 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 aged 22 he landed in Bangalore, 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 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, Manohar Singh, Pamela Rooks, Surekha Sikri, and Pankaj Kapoor, among other. The group performed various forms of drama until 1977, when John joined the 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). He has been conducting 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 (The Chess Players) (1977), Richard Attenborough's Gandhi (1982), Massey Sahib (1985). He also acted in several of his own productions, as well as that of other directors, including Roysten Abel's Othello a Play in Black and White. In 2010, he appeared in Tere Bin Laden in the role of a United States security general.

In 2007, he moved to Mumbai, where his acting school was opened as 'Barry John Acting Studio', in the same year, he also wrote 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.

Filmography Year Title Role Notes1977 Chess Players 1982 Gandhi Police Superintendent 1986 Massey Sahib Charles Adam 1992 Miss Beatty's Children John Westcott 2000 Shaheed Udham Singh Michael Atlee 2003 In Othello Barry / Iago 2007 The Great Indian Butterfly 2009 Thanks Maa Priest 2010 Teen Patti 2010 Tere Bin Laden Ted Wood 2012 Chittagong Wilkinson 2014 M Cream Vishnu Das

Awards 1993: Sangeet Natak Akademi Award: Theatre Direction.