Christopher Gray talks to the respected artistic figure about his new role at Ruskin

John Retallack loves Oxford — the city in which he was born — and talks about it with such bubbling enthusiasm that it is sometimes hard to steer him away from the subject.

In the light of this, one can but marvel that it is only now, after significant periods of living here in the past, that he has come to regard the place as home for the rest of his life.

He has since last October had a new and hugely satisfying job as tutor in writing for performance at Ruskin College.

Could there be a role more suited to the talents of a man with a background in education, theatre and — yes — writing and whose views concerning the inclusive society accord so closely with those of the institution in which he works?

“The 350 students,” he says, “70 of whom are resident, represent all ages, races and classes. The place still holds true to the visionary idea that was planted when the college was founded in 1899.”

More than 20 years ago, when John began a 10-year stint as artistic director of the Oxford Stage Company, he told an interviewer what Oxford meant to him.

“My Oxford doesn’t really have so much to do with the University but the city itself. I love all the secret paths and little parks and allotments and canals.”

For him, now, Ruskin is another important part of what he calls “that other Oxford”, as he explains to The Oxford Times over a glass of Pinot Grigio in Osney’s Punter pub.

The choice of venue was his (“It’s fantastic”) with no consideration given to the fact — he didn’t know it — that it is his interviewer’s local.

“When I saw the Headington buildings for the first time,” he says “I was stunned by how beautiful they are. On the very edge of Oxford, they consist of a wonderful old house with a brilliant modern extension. From the windows there are glorious views across open countryside.”

He is delighted that work can be easily reached by bike from the new home that he and his wife, the actress Renata Allen, rent in Divinity Road.

The home, for its part, is no less easily accessed on the motorway coaches by their two children, Jack, 26, an assistant producer of films who lives in Bristol, and Hanna, 28, who teaches English at London’s Sylvia Young Theatre School.

John wants people across the city to share in what he considers the “well-kept secret” of Ruskin, to which end he is directing a new programme of what are called Ruskin Theatre Platforms to attract outsiders — who aren’t being charged a penny — to the college. They are being offered a series of rehearsed readings of radical plays — beginning next Wednesday with Shelagh Delaney’s A Taste of Honey — and talks from top-calibre speakers, including novelist Mark Haddon (author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time) and playwright David Edgar, whose successes include the RSC’s legendary adaptation of Charles Dickens’s Nicholas Nickleby.

That John has been able to attract such high-profile figures — and attract them, moreover, without payment — is a reflection of the high esteem in which he is held in the world of the arts and education in which his working life has largely been spent.

He was born in Oxford’s Radcliffe Infirmary in July 1950, when his father, Tony was a postgraduate student reading modern languages at Keble College. Tony, who went on to become head of languages at St Paul’s School (which John attended), is still in good health at 91. He is shortly moving into a retirement home in Jericho from which, says John, he will no doubt be taking regular strolls with border terrier Sally to the dog-friendly Punter pub.

John trained as a teacher at colleges in Cheltenham and Bristol. His first opportunity to work in Oxford came in teaching English as a foreign language in summer schools run by David Norrington at Hertford College (“It was a lot of fun”).

His interest in, and aptitude for, theatre began while he was an English teacher at Frensham Heights, a progressive independent school in Surrey.

He mounted a production of Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi and found — surprise, surprise — that pupils were entranced by its sex and violence.

“They suddenly started writing good essays,” he says, while for him, as his talent for directing emerged, a new career beckoned.

The Actors Touring Company, which he founded, began life in 1978 with an advertisement in Time Out: “Actors Wanted.”

They came.

In the years that followed, tours around the country were punctuated by summer seasons in Oxford, when ATC hired the Oxford Union for Shakespeare productions.

“We attracted quite large local audiences,” he says, “and we worked with the help of some very nice local people. If any of them are reading this article, it would be great if they were to get in touch.” (Going to one of the Ruskin Theatre platforms would be a way of doing this. Reserve tickets at ruskinplatforms@ruskin.ac.uk) In what was to become something of a career pattern, John spent 10 years with ATC before accepting the job of artistic director of the Oxford Stage Company.

His intention in this role, amply fulfilled, was to stress its links with the city that gave it its name (even though much of its time was spent out on the road at other venues).

He and Renata moved with their young children to a house in Littlehay Road, near Florence Park.

Productions were planned from large offices in George Street. Some performances were given, besides those at the Playhouse, at the Newman Rooms in St Aldates, which John tricked out and restyled the Rose Theatre.

John rang down the curtain on this period of his working life, again a decade, with a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream which closed with a packed last show at the Playhouse in November 1998.

His move into children’s theatre, with his Company of Angels, was prompted by the realisation that ATC’s touring audiences “were getting older and older”.

In a bid to create new work for younger audiences he began to write plays himself. Dealing with different aspects of social change, these include Truant (2011), Arlo (2009), A Bridge to the Stars (2007, National Theatre Connections), Risk (2007), Virgins (2006), Ballroom (2004), Common Ground (2003), WildGirl (2003/2013) and Club Asylum (2002). His work has been widely translated.

John is delighted at the huge improvement across the range of children’s theatre, and feeling, after another 10 years, that his work was largely done he became, in 2010, an associate artist at Bristol Old Vic.

If there has been a running theme throughout his career, it has been encouragement of the creativy in others. Since doing this precisely defines his role at Ruskin, it can be seen why this is now his ideal job.