Roxbury native teaches
world-class acting techniques

Bridgit Brown

Susan Batson’s acting workshop is already booked to capacity. Scheduled to take place on Friday, August 3 as one of the activities in this year’s Roxbury Film Festival, the workshop will walk a selected group of actors through a series of exercises aimed at getting actors and actresses to drop into the character’s needs, recognize the public persona and search out the tragic flow in a monologue.

As the artistic director of Black Nexxus Inc., a first-rate Los Angeles- and New York-based studio for serious actors, Batson has a plethora of techniques to develop what she calls the actor’s “instrument,” or the self.

Born and raised in Roxbury, Batson’s mother was able to recognize and nurture her instrument at a very young age. “When I was eight years old, my mother took me to the Boston Children’s Theatre as a way to find something to do with my energy,” says Batson. “She said she thought that the people at the Boston Children’s Theatre would understand me and it was very true and quite wonderful.”

Chuckling, she says, “Later my mother regretted it. She said she wished that maybe she had found another vehicle for me. My mother was really bright and she really had a finger on children and what they needed.”

The late Ruth Batson, Susan’s mother, helped to launch METCO, a program used to eliminate de facto segregation in Massachusetts’ public schools. She served as president of the New England Regional NAACP, the Democratic State Committee Woman and commissioner of the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination.

Susan attended Emerson College, where she was one of two black students in her class. Despite being one of the only students of color, she cites the benefits of being in school at a time when everyone was taking part in consciousness-raising activities.

“My teachers bent over backwards to give me opportunities in education and training so that I could develop and grow.” She laughs again. “But it wasn’t real. Nobody asked me to do Chekhov in New York, but at least at Emerson College they asked me to do Chekhov so that I could grow. On that level, I appreciated the college.”

After graduating from college, Batson received the John Hay Whitney Fellowship to study acting in New York City. It was at this time that she says she had to confront a very powerful reality of life, living and survival.

“I worked at the New York Shakespeare Festival in the summers and I was fortunate to have received the fellowship to study acting, but it was still a culture shock. The competition was steep. It was not easy, and I was very, very lucky.”

Batson defines her job as an acting coach as one of getting the actor prepared to do whatever project they need to do, and helping the actor pull the best from both themselves and the craft in order to get the job done.

When asked about the challenges of her job, she said, “Well, the record is very good in the sense that Nicole Kidman won an Oscar. Tom Cruise thanked me for his Golden Globe. Juliette Pinoche won an Oscar and a Golden Globe.”

After thinking for a moment, she says that her prodigal child was Sean “Puffy” Combs, who performed the lead role in Black Nexxus’ production of “A Raisin in the Sun,” Lorraine Hansberry’s 1950s play about a black Chicago family’s struggle to achieve the American dream in a segregated society. She said that Combs was able to convince people that he could do more than just survive a Broadway show.

“I produced that and I also produced the ABC movie for ‘A Raisin in the Sun,’ which will air in February 2008. I think people are going to be even more surprised at [Combs’] growth from the Broadway show to a film. He will star as the lead male actor opposite Felicia Rashaad.”

In her opinion, black actors and actresses today face the same challenges as their predecessors. Finding meaningful material and finding roles that are challenging, powerful and can stretch the instrument is very difficult.

“As a minority, there is this constant need to find the commercial vehicle that will help you to get out there in the world and get exposed — a commercial vehicle that doesn’t compromise you,” she says. “The struggle is also that not many are getting through and now the people who are getting through are those that have commercial value, and those that have commercial value are our rap stars and not necessarily our actors.”

The challenges for black producers today, she says, are the same as for the actors and actresses: finding a product that has commercial value but that does not compromise the individual’s integrity.

“If you do not end up finding a good product, you end up with a Sean ‘Puffy’ Combs on Broadway because he can bring in an audience and I just so happened to be working with him periodically for two years prior to him getting the role because I knew he could act, but just as importantly as he could act, he could bring in an audience. The play [was an] extraordinary success because of his just being present in it. Also, the demographics were across the board. Everybody came and it almost made you cry because you wanted Lorraine Hansberry to be heard and understood by a large group of black people and you saw that the kids came with their mothers and grandmothers. It was multigenerational and it was exciting.”

Batson recently published “True,” a book of acting techniques that she hopes will encourage actors and actresses to delve into the foundation of her pedagogy, which she says is the truth.

“My process is to set up for the actor their responsibility to humanity and the response is supposed to reflect the human condition and what it takes to be a human being in this world. If the actor is truthful, the actor recognizes that they are all human beings and that in them is a queen as well as a whore and even a killer. Then you come to understand that you have all of these possibilities in you and that by choice you don’t act upon that impulse to kill. You would be a liar if you said, ‘I never thought of killing anyone or any thing.’ If you start to [accept] those kinds of truths within yourself, then I think you are ready to act.”

Black Nexxus offers classes to anyone and everyone. For more information, visit their Web site at www.blacknexxusinc.com.