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I know Susan since quite a while now and so I enjoyed our little interview session a lot. And once again I got to experience what a genereous and giving person she is.
Stefa and i talked to her in her acting-studio in New York, April 2003.
...more info on Susan Batson
SR/LS: Do you consider coaching your way of creative expression?
SB: No....no..... no. The coaching for me is skill, it’s a skill. It’s everything I know about acting. It’s a very strange process, because there is the actor that I have to sort of channel and understand and there is the character - and then I have a skill, which allows me to understand what the actor needs to play that role. And it’s by being empathetic towards the talent and knowing the nature of the talent and understanding what that talent needs to get in order to play that role and ... and it’s through skill, really actingskills I know and understand that I can help and guide the talent to step in. But it’s not my creative expression. I would probably play and create the part differently for myself. I give what I know about acting to help the talent to find his or her creative expression to play the role.
SR/LS: Do you still act?
SB: No, and this is not good. I don’t act as much...I think it’s important to act in order to teach. I don’t have to act in order to coach, but in order to teach and to experience what the actor is going through, in order to be able to share with them I should be acting a little bit more. I feel like that I started acting at eight years old, so there is a lot I know about acting, you know. I know the bad, the good, you know...I’ve done very, very bad acting and I’ve done very, very good acting. So I feel like I’ve acted enough, you know, to be able....but I mistrust any teacher who doesn’t find a way to act themselves. I really mistrust. And in fact in the studio that I have I like teachers who act. I think that’s very, very important. They are out in the world acting.
SR/LS: So you make a distinction between teaching and coaching?
SB: Big, big distinction. Big, big, big one...ehm...The teaching... I think teaches me. And I learn constantly about acting through the teaching. And the coaching as I said is skill. It’s just smart...it’just being smart and having enough savoir about the artform to be able to share it with the talent and encourage them to make the choices for themselves...giving them permission to make the choices for themselves that will serve. Whereas the teaching because of its problemsolving and its developing a talent it really, really, really gives you enormous amount of information, enormous amount.
SR/LS: How do you balance all you take in? How do you take care of it? Do you need to release?
SB: Yeah, and I really have to do it on a daily basis. Because when you teach as much as I do, or coach as much as I do, I do have to check in. You really have to check in with yourself. And even though I’m a workaholic and it appears to people, that I may be avoiding myself a lot, I spend a considerable amount of time checking in. And the process that I use to check in on myself is primarily acting, the acting process of being able to release emotionally and release through sensory process and ... also I love to sing, that’s a release, sometimes I walk through my apartment and sing my head off...I paint, that’s a release... I do a lot of writing... But the dominant, the dominant release of all the stuff that I take in is emotional. And if I don’t take care of that, I can’t open myself at all, at all. For me it’s better than going to sleep. Some people would say that sleep will do it - Sleep doesn’t do it. I have to get it out, to put it out. I have to feel it in my body. I have to allow my body to feel it and feel the energy going through my body and get it out...and feel myself again.
SR/LS: Is there a common denominator in the people you coach?
SB: Yeah. Clear across the board, really really clear across the board they are of the most hardest working people I’ve seen. They make enormous commitments and they work very very hard, very hard - constantly on a daily basis.
SR/LS: Working hard on what?
SB: They work on themselves. They work on the material. They work to look for new material. They spend enormous time putting together their career. They’re not sitting back waiting for anyone, I was surprised about that. I thought when you reach that point scripts come to you and you don’t have to worry. No! - They are cultivating new material for themselves, they are looking for new writers, they are reading books. So they are constantly, constantly in their process...in their search for growth in their work and for growth in themselves, constantly.
SR/LS: How do you relate to acting as a business?
SB: Very badly. Very badly. And I don’t consider acting anything near business. I consider it a primary artform. And the showbiz element is something I have avoided for years.
I’m now, you know, in the middle of showbiz. I mean...by coaching the stars that I coach I’m in the middle of Hollywood and I can’t believe it, I really, really cannot. But I think it was a lesson that I had to learn about...putting it out in the world. And maybe a lesson that you can hold on to your integrity out there in Hollywood. It’s a fight and it’s a battle, but you can hold on to your artistic integrity, you know. And I really have to tribute that to learning from Nicole (Kidman) who - except for maybe one or two exceptions in the eight years I worked with her - has made choices out of her artistic integrity. And therefore working with her is enjoyable in the sense of the material has artistic integrity.
SR/LS: How did you experience your own career as an actress in that sense?
SB: In my own career as an actress I thought that if I stepped to far out, that I would loose my integrity and my purity, so I was on guard from day one in working in showbusiness. I was also very caucious because of the fact that I lived in a racist society. I always was on the look out for racism which made me say no all the time. I always was sure that I was gonna be exploited or that I was not going to represent black people in a right way. And the roles where not there...or the roles were so stereotypical that it made me retreat from the business on a certain level - even though my contemporaries at that time would say that I was considered the actress who worked the most. So, you know, it was a constant battle, constant.
SR/LS: Do you make a distinction between you as an artist and you as a social being?
SB: Yeah, big one, big one. And I would say that the artist is very evolved and that the social human being is very limited. I would say there is a clear distinction and maybe the social being is about three years old or five years old and the artist I think is about a hundred and eighty years old.
SR/LS: Is there something you can give to the art which you cannot give to your life?
SB: Yes, passion... and I can give the art full attention and my life I give very little, you know. Except bodily functions like eating and peeing and shitting.... like the life things - but art I can give absolutely full, full concentration.
SR/LS: Is there something that art gives to you that live doesn’t?
SB: Art I think gives me most of the lessons. Most of the lessons I’ve learnt have just come directly from art. From life I have learnt very very very very very little, except for the...I think the gift of unconditional love, I have learnt that with my child. But I think art has taught me and will continue to teach me all the time.
SR/LS: What does make an expression artful to you?
SB: It’s funny, but, you know, the first thing that came to mind, was a drawing and a puppet made out of paper-mache that my son did when he was a kid... and then I thought: what is it that I would call these art... I think because they touched something in me very deeply and they made me think. So I would say an expression becomes artful when it touches. It becomes artful when - or great art - when it’s capable of touching you intellectually, touching you emotionally, and touching you psychologically and spiritually, and when it can trigger your own imagination - then it becomes art. Otherwise it’s not art.
SR/LS: If you think of the essence of your whole being, how would you describe it?
SB: The essence of my whole being...that’s a full question....(laughs) Oh, you wanna know the truth what just came up?.. is ‘mother’.....I don’t know. The essence of my whole being, how do I see it? I think I see it as intuition, sensitivity, creativity - the essence of it. And I think.... yeah....that’s it: creativity, sensitivity, intuitivness, intuition.
SR/LS: What do you consider as essential for your life?
SB: Spitituality, creativity....and my child.
SR/LS: What does spirituality mean to you?
SB:...It means a force that I trust in, that I feel that gives me purpose, gives me a sense of myself, gives me sense of the universe and gives me a trust in....in....in living.
(chuckles) People laugh at me when I say this, but I could really see myself in a convent, you know, meditating, doing the labor and everything.
SR/LS: What does friendship mean to you and what a role does it play in your live?
SB: Well, I would have friends that would say it means shit, it means absolutely nothing to me. I tell you, I would say that my friends would say that I’m a good friend in crisis. If you have a problem, you call, I will be right there.... I don’t cultivate friendship, I don’t...it might be even said that I don’t even work at them. But if you need me, I’m there. It’s a very peculiar thing. And probably the reason is, because I’m a workaholic. So if you a part of...really a direct part of my workaholic life then you’re up to see me a lot. If you’re not, you’re not up to see me. So... I would say that I’m a lousy, lousy friend - except if you need me in a crisis, I’m great.
SR/LS: What does family mean to you ?
SB:.... Roots, it means.....responibility, it means.... love, it means.... unconditional love, it means... heritage.... it means, it means, it means a lot, and I’m very, very responsible to my family, very responsible.
SR/LS: What do you think is needed in our time?
SB: Ah, I think that’s a very good question. .....I...... I think what we really need is a great philosopher to come forth, but I mean a great one! I feel we need thinkers, great, great minds, really great minds. I really feel we need to renew ourselves, I really feel we need a rebirth.
And for the artform I think all artists - or for art - all artists must now become renaissance-people in the sense of being able to be really, really total and complete artists, really total.... to be able to do all things in art.
I think if we become renaissance-artists there is.... you know, nothing is new under the sun, there really isn’t anything new, and I think we all know that....but there is a regenerating, there is rejuvenating, and there is discovery, and there is invention, when you can be in a rebirth. And when you can feel the sense of yourselves, of the world, and of the country going through a rebirth, new ideas, new invention, new things can happen. That’s what I would like to encourage. ...So maybe collectively we as artists can be that philosopher.... I think if we don’t have some kind of real, real thought, real great thought input into our lives, I think we gonna be in big trouble, I really do. We cannot continue like in the mentality we are in now, not in America.
SR/LS: Do you think a mission is necessary for an artist?
SB: Absolutely, absolutely. I really think you have to have a strong desire to say something or to change something or to give something. And I think without that I don’t know if the art is meaningful, if it would be great art. And that was kind of the genious of Brando that he really had a mission. He was highly politizied and the genius of him was that he was able to figure out in acting how to get the purpose and what he wanted the world to know .... and he really created a new kind of acting as a result of that. He created an actor with a conciousness and a social conciousness which was pretty profound. ... I think it changed the face of acting, it totally changed it.
SR/LS: Do you have a mission?
SB: Yeah .... and I think I came out of the womb with one, because I was really taught as a child that due to the racial configuration of America I had the responsibility to make a change. And with that responsibility to make a change my mission was to make history. I am the child of a woman who constantly was the first black woman to do this, the first black woman to do that and who, as a result of that, really set forth the challenge for each of her children to make a difference. She was constantly in the street, fighting for the civil rights of black people, so we were trained to really go out and make history. Not do good, but to change the fucking world and change it now! - that was the job.
SR/LS: If you think of the little girl you have been what of her is present in your art, what of her lives in your art?
SB: Well, I was a very very very very serious little girl (laughs) Really very serious and I was also psychic, like I would have visions, you know. I would know when somebody died or when something would happen (chuckles)...and my mother would say ‘Tell her, I don’t want to know! Just if she’s got one of those visions or stuff, just tell her, I don’t want it, she’d just keep it for herself.’ So I really did learn keep it to myself, which created a very special world of the visions and of my imagination and... and... it was kind of a interesting place I lived in, it really was....It was a very, very interesting space... But I think what it gave to my actress was an enormous imagination and an intuitive, very strong intuitive sense of things. And a seriousness of commitment that...you know... I could not have half way made a commitment, I had to make a powerful strong strong strong commitment to everything. With deep deep deep intent and everything - which made me very funny, also... because I was so so ridiculously serious.
SR/LS: Do you have the feeling you live and create in your full potential?
SB: No! (laughs) Absolutely not, no. I really don’t, I really don’t. And to me it’s one of my mayor frustrations of my life, that I don’t. And I think it’s because I in some way get caught up in worriation. I get distracted...and it’s not because I sleep or rest... I just don’t think that I really take enough risk. I think I’m playing it a little bit too safe and I don’t take enough risk to make that space, to make that time that you need to really live in your full potential, your full creative potential. And I think I get worried about life-issues. And in America one of the big life-issues is money. And so you have a tendency to, you know, have to make money to keep the roof over your head. And you get a worriation about that instead of making the space to go ahead and move and express and to live in that full creative potential.
SR/LS: So but you would encourage taking that risk as an artist?
SB: Oh yes, yes...and, you know, Daniel Day Lewis came to mind now...you know he went to Italy and learned how to make shoes!...I think he needed an artform, another artform, or another form of expression and he discovered that he had tremendous satisfaction and tremendous peace, which he needed, in making shoes. I mean can you imagine making a pair of shoes? I mean...It gave him tremendous sense of power and a tremendous gratification. I think it’s beautiful. And he then goes back, and he acts, you know, and then he goes back to Italy. I don’t know if he has other forms of expression. I imagine he does. I imagine that he takes the time to explore other things. He sounds a bit renaissance to me, you know.
So I would very much encourage taking that risk as an artist, as I said. And I’m hoping that through the work in my studio I’m able to encourage artists to be full - the actor to be renaissance-artists - that’s what I’m hoping for, I really, really am. And that they are thinking of invention and that they are thinking of rebirth, and that they are thinking of creating across the board.... We’re not there yet, but I like to encourage that.
SR/LS: Do you have a vision of what your work is or shall be about?
SB: Yeah, I think I do. I think I want...or I can tell you what I’d like it to be, you know, when everything is culminated and I leave this earthly planet. (chuckles) I would like to think I’ve contributed to the acting... to a new way of dealing with acting that - one: everybody is aware that acting is a primary artform, - two: I hope that it inspires acting-talent to feel the responsibility to respect what makes a human being. I hope that I leave a sense of acting as a responibility to respect humanity, and all the forms of humanity, and the internal life of humanity and how important it is for us to understand the needs of human beings.
SR/LS: Do you have the feeling that there is an artist in everybody?
SB: Yes, I do. I don’t think everybody can act, but I do believe there is a creative force or spirit in everybody. And that creative spirit can have manifested itself in many ways.
SR/LS: What would you say makes you do what you do?
SB: A big big big big big big big big need to be nurtured, a big need to grow, a big need for understanding and so maybe it can be called a need to be mothered. And somehow the artform, or the search of what I think the artform is about - acting is about - creates for me this special kind of nurturing, this special kind of guidance...and it takes good care of me. So I have a huge need, I guess, to be mothered and somehow the artform mothers me.
And so far in my life somehow this seems to be the only thing that takes care of the need. The art takes care of the need. And the need is what drives me.
SR/LS: Do you have the feeling that people you were working with know about their specific need?
SB: No. And I think it’s...in fact it’s always fun to get them to learn that they have needs. So wether it’s in the teaching process or in the coaching process I’m always very very very happy to explain that ‘We have needs!’ and that these needs should be respected and that these needs are the thing that propell us as human beings. And I get excited when people understand that. Because the way in which I grew up is that we weren’t supposed to have needs. You were supposed to change the world, you were supposed to stay strong, stay healthy, and get smart and figure out how to change the world, not to have basic basic needs.
SR/LS: Are there times when you have the feeling that you’re not on track?
SB: Oh, many many times. Not in the art, not in art. In my life I’m sure I’m not on track or on the right train or anything...in life. In art I don’t care about right track, wrong track. In art I think I have so many possibilities and that I will be lead there intuitivly. I trust art implicitly that it is allright to be wrong, on the wrong track, off the track, everything, because I trust that if you just tell the truth about it, it will make art, and you can lift it to art.
SR/LS: Isn’t that something profound how art could inform life?
SB: Well, yeah. Art informs me. I don’t know if I necessarily yet have translated what it informs me to my life, you know... It may be that I’m so not interested in life that I, you know, I don’t take the information and work with it in life, you know what I mean.
SR/LS: You said that you’re painting, that you’re writing....
SB: Not enough....
SR/LS: What I wonder is, is it that the process is what’s important for you or is it as well that your art has to be seen by somebody else?
SB: I have a really big, big problem with putting it out into the world, because then it becomes business, so...the process is very satisfying for myself. I somehow don’t seem to need to be famous that way, you know what I mean, I don’t need to be known that way.
SR/LS: And what about sharing?
SB: Well, what I write and paint I might put it out in my small universe. I will put it on my wall if anybody sees it, you know what I mean. But I don’t need public acknowledgement. I do have a need to put out a book on acting. I have a real need for that to hit, you know. Before I die I want the world to know that acting is a primary artform and so this I’m eager to get out. It’s more philosophical and theoretical maybe, but that’s what I want to get out. And try to get the world to understand what an actor has to go through. To me this is extremely, extremely important, more important than maybe that you see my art, that you see my acting, you know.
I mean, I do think art has to be living, I do think art has to be a living force and I do think art has to be a shared force. I just don’t know if what I paint or draw has to go out in the world like that, you know. Like I have journals and books where I do sketches and stuff like that and I often think: ‘When I die!...Maybe now they’ll see the sketches and...!’...you know. (laughs) But I’m not compelled to put them out. - I’m compelled to...like what I’ve been dying to do for years is...is to study art in France. That’s like a romantic that I’ve had since I was very young - sixteen - that I thought I should study art in France... But it had to be in France not in America, you know. So I had this like very strange... need, a need for that...which is why I say that I haven’t taken the risk to do that, you know. I never took the risk to do that...and that’s a pity. To me that’s not living out your full potential. It’s just...it remains a dream.
I still paint, but I’m more interested in the process, in doing the process in France. Studying it, sitting at the Louvre, looking at the paintings. I still have that need, you know. That’s the fantasy, that’s one of the fantasies that I have not totally and fully realized.
I haven’t yet given up! Really! Before going to the monastery or to the convent I might do that first and then go to the monastery and the convent..
SR/LS: So you think nothing is impossible.
SB: Oh, no. No,no. No,no.
No. - I think that the horror is how safe we play it, that most of us play it very safe. Very very very safe. And I know that I am a warrior and that I left home with sixteen and I followed the dream... I came of Boston, and I came to NewYork and I did the dream - and I follow the dream. But I know that in some way I got save, I didn’t keep the warrior going to the degree that I think is necessary in order to be living in your full potential as the artist. And it’s not lazyness, it’s playing it a little bit to safe.
SR/LS: What does the warrior do, what’s the nature of the warrior?
SB: Conquest (laughs). The warrior sets out to conquer, the warrior sets out to tear down barriers, gain new territories, gain new land...(chuckles). Do you know what I mean?
I feel like I became more of a street-warrior, you know, NYC-warrior, rather than the world-warrior, that I started out. I was gonna conquer France, I was gonna.... do you know what I mean? Then I thought about...a little bit about Russia, you know, and things like that. And I havn’t fully gone the gammit where I thought the vision for myself was. You know, my vision is huge and the world I live in feels limited. And so it feels a little like: ‘Dammit! I...I... Son of a gun, I limit myself!’
SR/LS: So do you think if you would make a commitment to your potential you would be able to live it?
SB: Well, I would have to act on it .... I ... I don’t act on it, yet ..... I have a tremendous commitment to my potential, but I don’t act on it. I don’t do the work that is needed for the commitment to be realized...or to be realized on the global level that I invision it to be. ... And in one way it always keeps me dreaming, always keeps me reaching for something. So I’m never never never never satisfied. And in that sense I think it keeps me young, it gives me: ‘Not done, not done! More, more!’ It gives me a youthfullness and a sense of not getting sedentary in my little apartment, you know, having a cup of tea, reminiscing about what I’ve done or anything. It keeps me: ‘No, not done, not done!’...
But, you know, that’s the task, that’s what I have to say to myself: ‘Come on, open up the door!’...that’s the task right now. © lars schmidt & stefa roth
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