THE Times has called Howard Barker "Britain's greatest living playwright", and the ever controversial Barker would no doubt agree.

"I've never sought to be controversial, but I know a lot of people in the theatre establishment detest my work, though I also have a very devoted audience," he says.

"Often those who don't go to the theatre much find my plays easier to handle than those educated in theatre, and young people tend to accept them too."

His reputation would appear to go before him: ticket sales at York Theatre Royal are not exactly rampant for The Fence, the latest collaboration in his 15-year association with Barker specialists The Wrestling School Theatre Company.

Set in a world of rising frontiers and illegal immigration, The Fence is a sexually provocative epic about scandal in a ruling monarchy and its subsequent downfall, played out alongside the intensely personal story of a blind boy's struggle to discover his true identity in a world where nothing is what it seems.

The setting could be England now or any place struggling with cultural taboos, transgression and difference.

As ever, Barker is not anticipating an easy ride from those who do see The Fence. "The problem is my plays don't have a moral content and that upsets the establishment, but theatre is too big a place to be preaching to people," he says.

"I'm not famous for my tolerance, and I believe art forms destroy each other. Social realism has destroyed my work in the past, and tragedy has been virtually destroyed by social realism, even though it's the greatest writing form we have invented."

Barker does, however, find cause for encouragement. "Young writers are coming through, Torben Betts is one and there are half a dozen others, who are moving in the direction I've charted," he says.

"I expect my time will come when I'm finally underground but there are changes happening, and there's a general nausea with social realism setting in."

Barker believes he stands out from the crowd because he is a visionary. "I'm a visionary but visionary theatre is not popular any more. No one trusts geniuses any more in Britain but in Europe visionaries are at the forefront of theatre. Look at what happened to our last visionary, Peter Brook; he ended up in Paris," he says.

"You would have to get rid of something like the National Theatre and split the money 12 ways, but now there's a repression of English theatre that stops things happening; not that they would admit that.

"It's a very uncomfortable situation for me. I'm very insecure and I don't get the resources I need to do my plays at the big theatres, even though they are epic pieces."

Barker is a defender of freedom of expression in theatre, the removal of fences as it were. "It's a freedom that a lot of people are frightened about, but I don't set out to tell people things. Tragedy doesn't inform; it's simply an experience of pain and that's a necessary thing. Theatre is a need, not a therapy and not a science, and it has to present itself as a need," he says.

"The text of a play should be profoundly liberating because speech is freedom, where social realism is not freedom, and multi-media theatre is just desperation. I don't want to be a film-maker; there are some things that theatre alone has the power to bring to life."

The Fence, Wrestling School Theatre Company, York Theatre Royal, York, June 29 to July 2, 7.30pm.

Please note: York Theatre Royal is operating a two-for-one ticket offer on all performances. Tickets: £8.50 to £18; students and under 25s, £3.50; ring 01904 623568.

Updated: 09:53 Friday, June 24, 2005