'Assassins' role raises actor's spirits, his mother's concern

Liz Walker relates Obama backers' fears

Nik Walker during rehearsal for "Assassins" at the Boston Center for the Arts on July 3. "You have a show where you have some of the most hated people in our nation, and we just deal with them for two hours," Walker explained. "It's brilliant." (Globe Photo/Wiqan Ang)

When the theater troupe Company One called Nik Walker to tell him he had landed a role in "Assassins" - the dark Stephen Sondheim musical about people who have killed or tried to kill American presidents - he ran around his East Village apartment screaming with joy.

But when the New York University theater major called his mother, Liz Walker, the former WBZ-TV news anchor, her silence spoke volumes.

"I was like 'Mom, I got the part,' and I was expecting, 'Yeah, it's great!' " recalled Walker.

Instead of expressing elation over her 20-year-old son's professional Boston stage debut, the award-winning newswoman-turned-minister paused before posing these questions, her son recalls: "Why would a show like 'Assassins' be done at a time when we're about to have a first black president? Why would we want to put that energy out there?"

And just like that, Nik Walker's euphoria collided with a stark reality. A black man and a Barack Obama supporter, he confessed such questions had never crossed his mind.

Liz Walker felt the production's timing exploited the real fears of many Obama voters, particularly in the black community, that harm could befall the candidate, she explained. Throughout his campaign, Obama's charisma and political style have been compared with those of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Abraham Lincoln, all transforming figures in American history and all targets of assassination. Obama has received death threats, so Liz Walker disliked raising the specter of assassination through a musical.

With "Assassins" previewing today at the Boston Center for the Arts' Plaza Theatre, the tall, handsome, and buttoned-down Brookline High School graduate speaks easily about his own racial journey, from an insecure and confused youth growing up in a mostly white neighborhood to a more confident, outgoing man. His mother, who created a stir as a popular TV personality by becoming pregnant while unmarried, raised him by herself out of the public eye. The actor grew uncomfortable when he said he wasn't close to his father, but grinned as he described his mother as "my personal minister."

All the growing pains and life experiences have led, he hopes, to a life onstage.

"It was good for her not to be too excited at first because it gave me a good reality check," Walker said of his mother. "This isn't the type of theater that people always get happy about. Theater that makes you think is not always going to be the most outright appreciated."

"Assassins" has had a troubled but triumphant history, debuting off Broadway in 1991 and taking 13 years to reach Broadway, in part because of its difficult subject matter. The musical won five 2004 Tony Awards.

In Company One's modest production, Walker plays the key role of the Balladeer, the narrator who tells the killers' stories. At a recent rehearsal, actors in T-shirts and shorts transformed themselves into John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, and Lynette Alice "Squeaky" Fromme, who tried to shoot President Ford in 1975.

"You have a show where you have some of the most hated people in our nation, and we just deal with them for two hours," Walker explained. "It's brilliant. They are America, too. And we can't deny them."

Walker, who has been acting since the second grade, said he prefers to play sinister roles, very much unlike the Balladeer.

"Ironically, in my favorite musical and the darkest musical I can think of, I am playing the one guy who has a good heart," he said. "I've been trying to make him angst-ridden, but he's not. He's just a good person. It's, like, so frustrating."

Walker actually prepared for his role by studying footage of Obama, stealing inspiration from the candidate's mannerisms and promise of hope. "I wanted someone who would have a lot of strength," he said. "To me Obama represents that."

This isn't the first time Walker has stunned his mother. He went through a rough period as a child, he said, at one point denying his race. ("I'm not black," he recalled saying defiantly in arguments, "My name is Nik. I can't be defined by my race.") But he embraced his skin and confronted racism head on in high school, writing a short, subversive play: "Negrology 101, featuring the execution of the "last six white kids" in a fictional school. It wasn't an angry play, but a satire in which characters under duress were forced to blurt out their true feelings about peers of different ethnicities.

His mother's reaction? She found it very disturbing, he said, but was "happy that I was claiming my blackness in my own way."

"Assassins" is another step in Walker's personal, professional, and perhaps political evolution.

"My mom's generation [went] through a lot of these assassination attempts described in the show," he said. "My generation has not."

But he said he thinks it's important for his generation to understand the cultural impact of assassinations: "Especially at a time when that word is being thrown around so much with Obama, isn't it not only appropriate but isn't it a good thing that you have a show that talks about that?"

His mother isn't convinced. "This isn't a decision I would have made," she said repeatedly. But after much discussion and even arguments, she said she respects her son's choice to perform the play and remains in awe of his hard work and talent.

"He comes to that naturally. His mother is bold," she quipped. "He's young, and that's what young people do. They test their talent and test their environment."

And she will be right there in the seats, supporting her son.

"The one thing I want my son to do is to make choices and live with the consequences," she said. "My hope is that in every production he takes on, I want him to take it very seriously, and I want him to think about what he is doing and what he is putting out into the world. . . . That's my prayer."