Substitution in Acting: Uta Hagen’s Technique, Step by Step

Your character has lost a father, longs for a city she left years ago, or is about to marry someone she barely knows. You have done none of those things. Your teacher watches the scene, nods, and says, “Good. Now find a substitution.” Then the class moves on, and you’re left wondering whether you’re supposed to think about your own dad during the speech.

You’re not, or at least not the way you fear. Substitution is a useful tool in Uta Hagen’s technique that is often misread.

Here is the short version. Substitution means finding something in your own life that works like the character’s situation, so the fiction means something to you. It’s done in preparation, not as a trance during the scene. You choose material you can live with, you keep it private, and you use it to change what you do. Then you let it go and play to your partner.

What substitution means, and why Hagen renamed it

In its plainest form, substitution is understanding the elements of your character’s life by comparing them to elements of your own. That’s how the Wikipedia entry on substitution in theatre sums it up, drawing on Hagen’s Respect for Acting (1973, written with Haskel Frankel).

Hagen was firm about what it’s for. “Substitution is not an end in itself,” she wrote. The point wasn’t to feel things for their own sake. It was to arrive at behavior that is justified and personal: the way you hold a letter, the way you can’t look at someone, the reason you cross the room.

In her second book, A Challenge for the Actor (1991), she changed the name. As the entry on Respect for Acting notes, “substitution” became transference. Austin Pendleton, who studied with Hagen, explains in Backstage why: she wanted to keep actors from getting so absorbed in the technique that they dropped out of the world of the play.

Hold onto that reason. It’s the key to using substitution well, and we’ll come back to it.

Substitution, sense memory, and endowment are different tools

These three terms get mixed up, often in the same class. They work together, but each answers a different question.

• Substitution (later, transference) answers “What does this mean to me?” You find a person, place, object, or event from your own life that parallels the character’s, so the given circumstances matter to you.
• Sense memory answers “What does this feel like physically?” You recreate a sensation that isn’t there: heat, cold, taste, smell. Our guide to sense memory covers the classic exercises.
• Endowment answers “What is this object?” You give a prop qualities it doesn’t have: a cold cup that has to be scalding, an empty suitcase that has to be heavy. It’s one of Hagen’s object exercises.

HB Studio, where Hagen taught, treats two of them as distinct: its 2024 catalog lists “substitution/personalization” and “endowment of sensory conditions” as separate skills in its Acting 2 class.

Substitution is also not the same as reliving your worst day. Emotional memory, as it’s usually taught, recalls a personal event to bring back the feeling you had then. Backstage’s guide to Hagen’s technique makes the distinction: for her, substitution is more about putting yourself convincingly into the play’s circumstances than about importing your life’s defining moments.

How to find a substitution, step by step

Substitution starts with the script, not with your memories. If you start by digging through your past, you’ll find something big and vague. Start with the moment instead.

1. Name what’s happening to the character right now. Not the whole play, this moment: she’s being asked to leave, he’s seeing an old friend after years apart. Hagen’s nine questions are a good way in.
2. Ask what in your life works the same way. The Backstage article on personalizing says the parallels don’t have to match the script literally. You may never have been widowed, but you’ve had someone leave a room and not come back the same.
3. Make it specific. Not “my hometown” but the corner by the bakery where the bus stopped. Not “an ex” but the jacket he left on your chair. Specific choices produce specific behavior.
4. Test it on its feet. Run the moment with the substitution in mind. Did anything change: where you looked, how fast you spoke, what your hands did? If nothing changed, it isn’t working. Try another.
5. Tie it to something in the scene. Attach the substitution to an object, a person, or a place on stage, so the prop or the window carries it for you. Then you don’t have to think about it during the scene.
6. Keep it to yourself. You never have to say what your substitution is: not to your scene partner, not to your teacher, not to a director.

Expect to try several. First choices are often too big or too general. The useful ones are often small and slightly odd, and they only make sense to you.

A worked example: Olga’s Moscow

Chekhov’s Three Sisters opens a year after the sisters’ father died. Here’s a moment from Act 1, in Julius West’s public-domain translation as published by Standard Ebooks. Olga, the eldest, is a teacher in a provincial town. Her sister Irina finishes her thought.

OLGA: Don’t whistle, Masha. How can you! I’m always having headaches from having to go to the high school every day and then teach till evening. Strange thoughts come to me, as if I were already an old woman. And really, during these four years that I have been working here, I have been feeling as if every day my strength and youth have been squeezed out of me, drop by drop. And only one desire grows and gains in strength …

IRINA: To go away to Moscow. To sell the house, drop everything here, and go to Moscow …

OLGA: Yes! To Moscow, and as soon as possible.

Three Sisters, Act 1 (Anton Chekhov, trans. Julius West)

You’ve probably never lived in Moscow in 1900. But Moscow isn’t really a city in this scene. It’s the place where life was good and could be again. Most of us have one of those.

So look for yours, and look for a place rather than a loss. It might be the town you grew up in, a summer job where you were happiest, or a grandparent’s kitchen. Pick one detail from it: the light at a certain hour, a particular street. The play hands you the grief for the father; you don’t need to bring your own.

Now notice what the choice does. “Yes! To Moscow, and as soon as possible” can’t be a dreamy sigh anymore. If you’ve been tired for four years and the place is specific to you, the line becomes a plan. Irina finishing Olga’s sentence suggests the sisters have had this conversation many times before. That’s a choice worth trying in rehearsal. Then run the line with your place in mind. If “as soon as possible” still comes out as a sigh, try another place.

Finally, put the substitution somewhere in the room. Maybe Olga looks out of the window when she says “drop by drop”. The window becomes your place: that street, that light. In performance you just look out of the window.

Keep it safe: use material you’ve already processed

Substitution works because your own life means something to you. That’s also the risk. The Backstage guide says Hagen was clear about one line: never substitute circumstances you’d be uncomfortable talking about or exploring in public. That’s a sound rule for the whole technique.

• Choose what you’ve already come to terms with. A loss from years ago that you can talk about calmly is very different from one that happened last month. Raw or recent material stays off limits, whatever an exercise asks.
• Keep a private no-go list. Write down what you won’t use and don’t negotiate it in the moment. You never have to explain it.
• Use imagination where memory would hurt. The Stella Adler studio’s core beliefs put the actor’s imagination ahead of relying only on their personal past. An invented place you care about can work as well as a real one.
• Look at it from the outside. In a 2008 paper, Kross and Ayduk found that people who analyzed a depressing memory from a self-distanced, observer’s point of view felt less depressed than people who analyzed it while immersed in it, and the difference held a day and a week later. It wasn’t a study of actors, but it suggests a habit worth keeping: think about the memory, don’t relive it.
• Close the session. Shake out, change clothes, or walk around the block when the work is done. If a memory stays with you, talk to someone you trust.

A good teacher will respect a choice you make to protect yourself. If one pushes you to use something you’ve said is off limits, that tells you something about the class.

Don’t let it replace your scene partner

Remember why Hagen renamed the technique. The danger with substitution is the actor who’s busy with a private movie while the scene happens without them. You can spot it: the eyes go unfocused, the reading is the same every night, and the actor misses it when a partner changes something.

The new word hints at the answer. The substitution should change how you see the person in front of you, not replace them. If your partner reminds you of someone who always let you down, let that color how you listen to them. Then answer what they actually say tonight.

A few habits keep the balance:

• Do the work in rehearsal, then trust it. By performance, the substitution should live in your choices, not in your conscious thoughts.
• Put your attention on your partner. Your objective is about them: to get them to stay, to make them laugh, to get them to admit something. Our guide to listening on stage has exercises for this.
• Change it when it stops working. A substitution can wear out over a long run. If a moment has gone flat, go back to step two and find a fresh one.

Know the words so you have attention to spare

Everything above needs free attention. You can’t hold a private image of the bakery corner, track your partner, and search for your next line all at once. If the words aren’t solid, the line-hunting wins and the substitution disappears.

So get the text out of the way first. Offbook helps with that part: upload the scene, pick your role, and realistic voices read every other character, then wait for you to finish your line before playing the next cue. Hide your lines as they settle, and hide the whole script for a final test. Once the words come on their own, rehearsal time goes to the choices.

If you want to start on a speech like Olga’s right now, our free line memorizer turns any text into first-letter cues. For more material to practice on, browse our monologues.

Questions actors ask

What if nothing in my life is like the character’s situation?

Look for how it works, not what it is. You may never have betrayed a friend, but you’ve probably kept a secret that made you avoid someone’s eyes. If you still find nothing, imagine it: an invented circumstance that you build in detail can do the same job.

Is substitution the same as the Method?

No. Lee Strasberg’s Method is often associated with emotional (affective) memory, reliving a past event to bring back the feeling. Hagen’s substitution is about finding personal meaning in the play’s circumstances and turning it into action. Both draw on your life, but they ask for different things.

Can I use substitution in an audition?

Yes, in a quick form. With sides, you rarely have time for deep work, so pick one specific person or place for the most important moment and leave it there. Our guide to breaking down audition sides shows where that fits in your prep.

Should I tell my director what I’m using?

You don’t have to, and many actors don’t. Talk about the result instead: “I want to play that she’s been asking for this for years.” The director can respond to that without needing to know where it came from.