About the Book:

Stanislavski, Strasberg, Meisner, Adler, Berghoff, Hagen, Mamet… now Batson.

In Truth, the most sought after acting guru in Hollywood and on Broadway, strips away acting technique to reveal that which is most honest. She distills her half century's experience as an actor, director, teacher, and personal coach into a step by step process for creating a character from first read-through to final performance. The book is great for analysis, building a character and cutting to the core of what makes a character tick.

Susan Batson has become something of a legendary acting teacher, still plying her trade through the Susan Batson Studio located in the heart The Theater District of New York City. She trained with Harold Clurman, Uta Hagen and Herbert Berghof at HB Studio, and Lee Strasberg, and she carries on that tradition. She is the acting teacher who Nicole Kidman thanked when she won the Best Actress Oscar for The Hours. Tom Cruise did the same when he won a Golden Globe for Magnolia. She has also trained Oscar winners such as Juliette Binoche, Jamie Foxx, and Jennifer Connelly, as well as Jennifer Lopez, Chris Rock, Sean Combs, Liv Tyler, Zac Efron, Tyler Perry, Oprah, and countless other actors searching for "truth" in themselves and the characters they play. The New Yorker referred to Susan Batson as both a "technician of the spirit" and "the alchemist."

Her classes and private sessions are now distilled into a book form, in the handy, entertaining, and practical Truth: Personas, Needs, and Flaws in The Art of Building Actors and Creating Characters. For any A-lister on the rise, this "class in a book" is a way to access private coaching and start practicing Susan Batson's interpretation of the Method.

Debunking a century's worth of myths about method acting, Susan Batson identifies the unifying forces of Need, Public Persona, and Tragic Flaw to unite the actor with his or her character. Truth shows how actively defining and understanding these three principles leads to the most truthful performances possible. Easy to understand, at times inspiring, 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 from words on a page.

About the Author:

Susan Batson began her lifelong excursion into the art of acting at Adele Thane's Boston Children's Theater. She graduated from Emerson College's Theater Arts Program. A protégée of theater legends Joe Papp and Harold Clurman, she is a member of the Actor's Studio, and a recipient of a New York Drama Critics Award, an LA Drama Critics Award, and an Obie. Her Susan Batson Studio (formerly Black Nexxus acting school) has been profiled in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Variety, the Hollywood Reporter, and Backstage. Born in Roxbury, Massachusetts, she now makes her home in Manhattan.