The Chubbuck technique uses your emotion as fuel for an objective, not as the goal of the scene. You work out what your character needs from the other person, find a real stake from your own life that makes that need urgent, then play to win it. Most of the 12 steps end in something you can write on the page or test on your partner, not a feeling you carry around. Below: the steps sorted by where they happen, a filled worksheet on an original scene, and four ways the method backfires.
The 12 Steps, Sorted by Where the Work Happens
Ivana Chubbuck sets out 12 tools in her book The Power of the Actor. The three passes below are this article's rehearsal grouping, not her order, so each tool keeps its book number. Mixing up the places is how actors end up doing substitution at the kitchen table while their scene objective is still a mood. The acting techniques overview shows where Chubbuck sits among the other methods.
Page pass: do these first, with a pencil.
- 1. Overall objective: what your character wants from life across the whole play, phrased as a primal need.
- 2. Scene objective: what you need the other character to do in this scene, phrased as "to get you to ___".
- 3. Obstacles: what stands between you and the win, inside you and outside you. Start with the character's; add your own after the personal work.
- 6. Beats and actions: where the thought changes, and the verb you play on your partner in each beat. The marking system matches objectives and tactics.
- 11. Previous circumstances, character half: what your character has lived through that makes this scene matter today.
Private pass: do these once you know the scene well.
- 4. Substitution: a person from your own life who makes you need the objective. You endow your scene partner with that person.
- 5. Inner objects: a concrete image for every person, place, thing, and event the text mentions.
- 10. Inner monologue: the thoughts your character can't say out loud, especially while the other character is talking. Voice them in your head in full sentences.
- 11. Previous circumstances, your half: match the character's history with your own experience until their behavior makes sense to you.
Feet pass: do these in the space.
- 7. Moment before: the event just before the scene, taken from the script and filled from your life, strong enough to walk you in already needing something.
- 8. Place and fourth wall: endow the set, and what you see out front, with a real place from your own life, so the space carries privacy and history for you.
- 9. Doings: the handling of props, which produces behavior. A doing can steady you, make a point, or hide what you're really thinking.
- 12. Let it go: once the work is done, trust it and play the scene.
The operating rule: every tool has to end in something you can mark or test. A line on the page, a choice you try on your partner, an image you can name in a few words. If a tool only produces a feeling, you haven't finished it. That keeps the method in line with the rest of the script analysis workflow.
A Filled Worksheet on an Original Scene
Tess and her older brother Ray are in the back room of the family hardware shop. It's the night before the sale closes. Ray has already put Dad's spare key in an envelope on the counter.
| Character | Line |
|---|---|
| TESS | You already packed the till. |
| RAY | Somebody had to. |
| TESS | The buyer isn't coming till Friday. |
| RAY | Thursday. He moved it up. |
| TESS | And you said yes. |
| RAY | I said it's fine. It is fine, Tess. |
| TESS | Dad hung the spare key on that nail for thirty years. |
| RAY | And now it goes in an envelope. |
The eight lines don't say why Ray was away, what happened to Dad, or who has money. Entries marked (invented) are circumstances the text doesn't give you: choices for this example, to test with your director. Tess's worksheet, in Chubbuck's order:
| Tool | Tess |
|---|---|
| 1. Overall objective | To make my family treat me as someone worth staying for. |
| 2. Scene objective | To get you to hang the key back on the nail. |
| 3. Obstacles | The sale is signed. Ray has already packed. She can't buy him out (invented). He's never taken his little sister seriously (invented). |
| 4. Substitution | Initial only: "M." The person whose leaving I tried to stop. |
| 5. Inner objects | The nail: the dent in the plaster around it. Dad: his handwriting on the price tags. |
| 6. Beats and actions | "Till": to shame. "Thursday": to corner. "Key": to disarm. |
| 7. Moment before | She just found the till packed in a box by the back door (invented). |
| 8. Place and fourth wall | The back room becomes my grandmother's kitchen, the one room nobody could send me out of. Out front: its window at 7 a.m. |
| 9. Doings | She takes the key out of the envelope and won't put it down. |
| 10. Inner monologue | During "It is fine, Tess": You don't get to call it fine. You weren't here when it wasn't. |
| 11. Previous circumstances | Character: Ray left for eight years and came back only when Dad got sick. Tess ran the shop alone (invented). Mine: the year I kept something going after everyone else walked away. |
| 12. Let it go | No entry. Read the scene objective once before the run, then put the sheet down. |
"To get you to hang the key back on the nail" lands on Ray, and at the end of every run you know whether you won or lost. "To get Ray to understand how I feel" could be played for an hour without an answer. It also serves the overall objective. A key on its nail says the shop still matters, and so does the sister who kept it running. If Ray hangs it back, he's treating Tess as someone worth staying for. If it stays in the envelope, she's being left again.
How to Build Personal Stakes Without Losing the Scene
Substitution is the heart of the personal work: your scene partner stands in for someone real whose response you'd fight for. It raises the price of losing. It can backfire when the person you chose pulls your attention away from the actor in front of you.
Four rules keep it usable:
- Choose charge, not an open wound. Pick someone who still makes you want something, then watch what the choice does in a run. If you stop hearing your partner, lose your place in the text, or can't reach the same need on the next run, swap it for someone you can use every night.
- Match the need, not the story. Your substitution doesn't need a sold shop or a brother. It needs someone you once tried to stop from leaving.
- Write an initial, never the name. Scripts get left on rehearsal tables. An initial is enough to trigger the image.
- Test it against the objective. Run the scene with and without it. If it makes you fight harder for the key, keep it. If it makes you go quiet when the scene needs a fight, it's working against you.
If the scene is due in three days, run the passes in this order as a deadline compromise. Do the page pass tonight; for a short scene, thirty minutes is a useful timebox. Add the moment before and doings on your feet. If private work splits your attention while you're still learning the text, park substitution and inner monologue until the lines are steadier.
Where the Chubbuck Technique Backfires in Rehearsal
The substitution replaces your partner. The tell: your reading comes out the same whatever your partner gives you. Run the scene with only the scene objective, aimed at your partner's real face, then add the substitution back in small amounts.
Doings become business. A doing earns its place when it tells us something: what you're fighting for, or what you're hiding. Holding the key plays the objective directly. Rewinding packing tape could work too, if Tess uses it to keep her hands steady while she corners Ray. It fails when it's just something to do. If the blocking is fixed, clear new tasks with your director.
The inner monologue stops the scene. Writing it out in full is the right prep. Pausing mid-run to "hear" it is what drops your cues. Run it under your partner's lines, not in gaps you make yourself. In the margin, a three-to-five-word prompt is enough to bring the full thought back.
Tool 12 never happens. Checking the list in performance means the analysis is playing the scene, not you. Once a run lands, trust the work and put your attention on getting the key back on the nail.
Do it in HitCue
- Character page: record Tess's overall objective, her relationship with Ray, her history, and her emotional arc in the character's own fields, so the overall objective and previous circumstances stay with her across every scene you prepare.
- Scene notes: write the "to get you to" objective, the obstacles, and the moment before on the scene itself, then open them before each run, so the page pass stays attached to the scene instead of a separate notebook.
- Dialogue recordings: record Ray's lines at playing pace, then run your inner monologue under his voice and check that you still come in clean on your cue.
Open the scene, put your "to get you to" objective in Scene notes, and run it tonight against a recording of your partner's lines. → Download HitCue
