The Chubbuck Technique: Ivana Chubbuck’s 12 Steps Explained

The sides came in this afternoon and the audition is tomorrow. You’ve read the scene four times. You know roughly what happens and you could probably say most of the words. But when you read it out loud, it sits there. Nothing in you needs anything from the other person.

That’s the problem Ivana Chubbuck’s technique was built for. Her twelve steps are a checklist for turning a page of dialogue into something you badly want, something stopping you, and a person in front of you who can give it or refuse it.

The short version: the Chubbuck technique starts with what your character wants most, breaks that into what they want in this scene, and makes the stakes personal so you fight for it. Then it fills in the details that make it lived-in: thoughts, a place, objects in your hands, what happened just before. The last step is to stop thinking about any of it and play. Below are all twelve steps in plain words, a worked example, and a plan for using them on sides tonight.

Where the twelve steps come from

Ivana Chubbuck is an acting coach who heads a drama school in Los Angeles, as her Wikipedia biography notes. She set out her method in The Power of the Actor: The Chubbuck Technique, published by Gotham Books in 2004. The Internet Archive’s record of the book shows its contents: Part I is the twelve steps, Part II covers tools for specific situations, Part III applies all twelve to two scripts, and an epilogue covers auditioning.

A revised and updated edition came out from Avery in April 2025. Its publisher’s description says the technique builds on Stanislavski, Strasberg, and Hagen, and uses the actor’s own pain and emotion as fuel, not as the goal. That last part is the key to the whole method. Emotion matters only because it drives you toward what you want.

If you’ve studied Stanislavski, much of the vocabulary will feel familiar. His system, as the overview of Stanislavski’s system explains, breaks a role into “bits” (often mistranslated as “beats” in the US), each with its own task, and ties the tasks together with a supertask for the whole play. Chubbuck’s overall objective is close to his supertask, and her beats and actions are close to his bits and tasks. Her emphasis is on making every goal personal and urgent.

Steps 1 to 3: what you want and what’s in your way

1. Overall objective

The overall objective is what your character wants most across the whole script. It’s the big need underneath everything they do: to be loved, to be respected, to be safe, to get out. Choose it from the text, then say it as something you want, not a description of the character. “I want my father to see me” gives you more to play than “she has daddy issues.”

If this sounds like Stanislavski’s supertask, it is close. Our guide to the super-objective covers how to find it in a full play.

2. Scene objective

The scene objective is what you want from the other person in this scene, and it should serve the overall objective. The test is whether you’d know, at the end of the scene, if you got it. “I want him to say yes” passes. “I want to express my feelings” doesn’t, because you can do it no matter what your partner does. Our guide on how to find your objective in a scene has more tests for this step.

3. Obstacles

Obstacles are everything that makes the objective hard to get. Some are outside you: the other character says no, someone might walk in, you have five minutes. Some are inside: fear, pride, guilt, a habit of backing down. A scene with no obstacle has nowhere to go, so if you can’t find one, look harder at what your partner wants. It’s often the opposite of what you want.

Steps 4 and 5: make it personal

4. Substitutions

Here Chubbuck asks for something personal. A substitution is a real person from your own life that you put in place of your scene partner, chosen so the scene objective matters to you as much as it does to the character. If your scene objective is “make him forgive me,” you pick someone whose forgiveness you actually need.

A safety note of our own: you don’t have to pick your deepest wound to make this work. Pick a person who gives you a clear, strong want right now, and who you can think about in a rehearsal without falling apart. If a choice leaves you shaken after the work is over, choose a different one. Our guide to substitution in acting covers how other teachers use the same tool.

5. Inner objects

Inner objects are the pictures you see in your mind when your character talks or hears about a person, place, or thing. When the script says “my brother,” you see a specific face. When it says “the house,” you see a real kitchen with a real table. The audience can’t see the picture, but they can see that you’re seeing something. It helps to keep each picture consistent with your substitution, so the world in your head holds together.

Steps 6 to 9: shape the scene in time and space

6. Beats and actions

A beat is a stretch of the scene with one thought or tactic. When the thought changes, the beat changes. For each beat, you choose an action: a smaller goal in service of the scene objective, played on your partner. To flatter, to warn, to shame, to charm. Our list of acting action verbs helps when you’re stuck for a verb, and our guide to beats in acting shows how to mark the script.

7. Moment before

The moment before is what happened right before you walk into the scene. It gives you something to come in with, so you don’t start from zero on your first line. Make it specific and make it press on the scene objective. Our guide to the moment before has quick ways to build one.

8. Place and fourth wall

Place means giving the scene’s location the details of a real place you know, so it feels private and yours. The fourth wall is the side of the room where the audience or camera is; you fill it in with something you can see, like a window or a picture, instead of a blank space. Both help you behave the way you would when no one’s watching.

9. Doings

Doings are the physical things you do with your hands while you talk: pouring a drink, folding a letter, tidying a desk. They make the scene look lived-in. They also give your feelings somewhere to leak out. Someone who folds a letter very slowly while saying “I’m fine” is telling us something the line isn’t.

Steps 10 to 12: the thoughts, the history, and letting go

10. Inner monologue

Inner monologue is what your character thinks but doesn’t say, including what they’d never say out loud. It runs under your lines and keeps going while your partner speaks, so you’re never just waiting for your cue. Write it out for one scene and you’ll find your listening changes. Our guide to inner monologue shows how.

11. Previous circumstances

Previous circumstances are the character’s history: where they grew up, what happened to them, what they’ve done. You gather the facts the script gives you, then find where they meet your own life, so the history feels like yours. Our guide to given circumstances covers how to pull those facts from a script.

12. Let it go

The last step is to trust the work and stop thinking about it. Once you’ve done the first eleven, you don’t try to remember them while you act. You play the objective against your partner and let the rest happen. A summary of the steps by ActBroward puts the goal as to “live a role, not perform it.”

A worked example: Mrs. Cheveley’s offer

Here’s a moment from Act I of Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband, from the Project Gutenberg text. Mrs. Cheveley has come to a party at the Chilterns’ house in London. She has money in an Argentine canal scheme. Sir Robert Chiltern, Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, has just told her it is a swindle, and tomorrow he plans to lay a report against it before the House of Commons.

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN: [Rising.] But you have not seen my Corots yet. They are in the music-room. Corots seem to go with music, don’t they? May I show them to you?

MRS. CHEVELEY: [Shaking her head.] I am not in a mood to-night for silver twilights, or rose-pink dawns. I want to talk business. [Motions to him with her fan to sit down again beside her.]

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN: I fear I have no advice to give you, Mrs. Cheveley, except to interest yourself in something less dangerous. The success of the Canal depends, of course, on the attitude of England, and I am going to lay the report of the Commissioners before the House to-morrow night.

MRS. CHEVELEY: That you must not do. In your own interests, Sir Robert, to say nothing of mine, you must not do that.

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN: [Looking at her in wonder.] In my own interests? My dear Mrs. Cheveley, what do you mean? [Sits down beside her.]

Run Mrs. Cheveley through the first steps. Her scene objective is clear from what comes next in the play: she wants Sir Robert to withdraw the report and speak for the canal instead. Her outside obstacle is that he thinks the scheme is a swindle, and he has a reputation to protect. An inside obstacle you might choose: she can’t let him see how desperate she is, and she can’t reveal her real leverage too soon, or she loses her power over him.

Now the beats. The Corots line is Sir Robert changing the subject. Her refusal starts a new beat, and her action might be to pin him down: no pictures, sit back down. “That you must not do” is another shift, and the action might be to warn. She hasn’t shown her hand yet, which is why his reply is wonder, not anger. The fan gesture is a ready-made doing.

For a substitution, the actor needs someone in her own life she would fight to get a yes from, someone who has been brushing her off. For the moment before this conversation, she might have spent the evening watching him being admired by everyone in the room. Everything here came from the page except the personal choices, and those are the ones only you can make.

Run the twelve steps on audition sides tonight

The book ends with an epilogue on auditioning. Here’s our own one-evening pass through all twelve steps on a set of sides, in about an hour. Pair it with our guide on how to break down audition sides.

1. Read the sides twice, and the breakdown once. Write the overall objective and the scene objective as “I want...” sentences.
2. List three obstacles, at least one inside you. Then pick a substitution for your scene partner that makes the scene objective urgent, and an inner object for each person or place the sides mention.
3. Mark the beats with a pencil line wherever the thought changes, and write an action verb next to each one.
4. Write down the previous circumstances the sides give you. Then decide the moment before, give the place and the fourth wall real details, and pick one doing you can actually perform in a self-tape or a room.
5. Write out your inner monologue for the hardest stretch, including what you think while your partner talks.
6. Run the scene out loud three times. On the third, let it go and think only about getting what you want.

When a line puzzles you while you write your objectives and obstacles, Offbook’s Genie can help. It’s a script-aware assistant: ask what a character wants or what’s happening in the scene, or highlight part of the script for a targeted answer. Then check its answer against the text and make the final choice yourself. To rehearse the beats out loud, you can run your sides in Offbook, where voices read the other parts and wait for your line, then hide your lines for a final run.

Want to practice the steps on a classic first? Browse the public-domain plays on our site, or rehearse a classic scene with our free run lines tool, which needs no account.

How it fits next to other techniques

Chubbuck isn’t the only teacher with a list of questions. Uta Hagen asked actors to answer nine questions about who they are, where they are, and what they want. Those overlap with Chubbuck’s objectives, obstacles, and previous circumstances. The big difference is emphasis: Chubbuck centers everything on winning the goal, with your own life as the fuel.

Her substitutions also set her apart from teachers like Stella Adler, whose studio’s core beliefs put the actor’s imagination first, rather than depending solely on the actor’s own past. Our guide to the Stella Adler technique covers that approach. You don’t have to choose a camp. You can use Chubbuck’s first three steps on every script, because a clear want and a real obstacle help any scene, and bring in the personal steps where a scene needs more heat.

Mistakes that undo the work

• Playing the feeling. The pain is fuel for the objective. If you find yourself trying to look sad, go back to what you want from your partner.
• A passive scene objective. The big overall objective can be a broad need, but a scene objective like “to be understood” can’t be won or lost by the end of the scene. Turn it into something the other person has to give you.
• Skipping step 12. If you’re checking your notes in your head during the take, you’re not listening. Do the homework, then trust it.

Questions actors ask

What is the Chubbuck technique in one sentence?

It’s a twelve-step method from Ivana Chubbuck’s book The Power of the Actor that builds a role around what the character wants and what’s in the way, makes the stakes personal through substitutions and inner objects, and ends with letting go so you can play the objective freely.

What are the 12 steps, in order?

Overall objective, scene objective, obstacles, substitutions, inner objects, beats and actions, moment before, place and fourth wall, doings, inner monologue, previous circumstances, and let it go.

Is the Chubbuck technique good for auditions?

It can be, because the first steps give you a strong want and an obstacle fast, which is what makes a read alive. The book ends with an epilogue on auditioning. On a tight deadline, do the objectives, obstacles, beats, and moment before first, and add the rest as time allows.

Is it the same as the Method?

Not quite. Both draw on your own life: Lee Strasberg’s Method is often associated with emotional memory, and Chubbuck uses substitutions and your own history in previous circumstances. The difference is the purpose. Her publisher describes the technique as drawing on Stanislavski, Strasberg, and Hagen, with your emotion as fuel for winning a goal, not an end in itself.

Which edition of the book should I read?

The original came out from Gotham Books in 2004. The revised and updated edition from Avery, published in April 2025, adds new stories and exercises, according to its publisher.