User:Dustinclendenen/B.H. Barry

B.H. Barry is an English fight director and choreographer in theater, film, television, opera and ballet. He has been awarded both a Drama Desk and an Obie Award for Sustained and Consistent Excellence in Stage Combat. He helped form the Shared Experience Theatre Company with Michael Alfreds, developing a signature style of "Story Teller Theatre." He is also a co-founder of the Society of British Fight Directors, now known as the British Society of Dramatic Combat.He was a co-founder of Shakespeaere and Company in Lennox Mass.and helped form Blue Light Theatre Company in New York City

Born Barry Halliday in the English town of Staines, B.H. was raised in a working class family. He left school at fifteen due to financial difficulties and worked as a chemical engineer in the leather industry. After three years he left to pursue a theatrical career, working at various jobs to pay for his drama school training.

At the age of nineteen B.H. attended Corona Stage Academy. Here, he became a teacher of mime, voice, dialect and stage combat, as well as directing his own productions. He went on to study Aikido and stage combat with friend and mentor, Barry Jackson, an English stuntman. He also taught at the London Academy of Dramatic Art, Central School of Speech and Drama, The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

By the seventies B.H. found regular work in a multitude of industries, including theater,ballet, television and film, for the B.B.C., the Royal Shakespeare Company and directors Roman Polanski and Richard Fleischer.

In the course of teaching several workshops in the United States, B.H. met Earl Gister, Chair of the Drama Department at Carnegie Mellon, and was invited to teach a course there. At the time, stage combat was not taught as a core course in drama schools. From there he went on to teach at the Juilliard School, Yale, NYU, Temple City College, Circle in the Square where he still teaches and many other universities around the country.

His work in the entertainment industry encompasses films including The Adams Family, Pirates of Penzance and Olleanna,Mulan, and T.V. projects such as, Dr. Who and the BBC Shakespeare series. He was the regular stunt coordinator for the popular soap opera, All My Children for several decades. He has been awarded both a Drama Desk and an Obie Award for Sustained and Consistent Excellence in Stage Combat.

B.H. Barry continues to work as a fight director, and is currently writing a series of books on fight directing for Shakespeare.