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Truth
Personas, Needs, and Flaws in The Art of Building Actors and Creating
Characters
By Susan Batson
On Sale: February 13th 2007
1-59071-053-3 / 978-159071-053-1
$29.95/$37.95
Stanislavski, Strasberg, Meisner, Adler, Berghoff, Hagen, Mamet…now
Batson.
Like all great performers, Nicole Kidman approached her role in The
Hours as a creative collaboration. Kidman knew that portraying Virginia
Woolf on-screen required a truth that she as the actor and Woolf as
the character shared. Enter acting “alchemist” and “technician of
the spirit” (the New Yorker) Susan Batson. Batson’s process gave Kidman
the tools to find that truth and honed her performance from the inside
out. She won an Oscar® for her work.
In TRUTH, the most sought after acting guru in Hollywood and on Broadway
distills her half century’s experience as an actor, teacher, and personal
coach into a step-by-step process for creating a character from first
read through to final performance.
Debunking a century’s worth of myths about “method acting,” Batson
identifies the unifying forces of Need, Public Persona, and Tragic
Flaw to unite the actor with his or her character. Need is the primal,
unfulfilled desire that a character’s Public Persona hides. Tragic
Flaw is the confrontational dramatic behavior that erupts when the
character’s Need and Public Persona clash. TRUTH shows how actively
defining and understanding these three principals lead to the most
truthful performances possible.
A must-read for beginning actors, a wake-up call for working actors,
and an indispensable reference for writers, TRUTH reveals the inner
game of telling stories and creating vivid, three-dimensional life
out of words.
SUSAN BATSON and her New York– and Los Angeles–based Black Nexxus
acting school have been profiled in the New Yorker, the New York Times,
Variety, the Hollywood Reporter, and Backstage. A protégée of theater
legends Joe Papp and Harold Clurman, Batson is a member of the Actor’s
Studio. Her work onstage was recognized with a New York Drama Critics
Award, an LA Drama Critics Award, and an Obie.
As a coach, Susan Batson has consulted with actors Nicole Kidman,
Juliet Binoche, Tom Cruise, Chris Rock, Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Lopez,
Jennifer Connelly, Liv Tyler, and director Spike Lee. She was a producer
of the hugely successful Broadway revival of A Raisin in the Sun,
starring Sean Combs.
Susan Batson was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts, and now makes her
home in Manhattan.
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