The Chubbuck technique

the acting technique for the 2010

12 steps to an inspired character going for the win.
12 steps to a passionate, raw, authentic performance.
12 steps to be yourself in your acting.

The Chubbuck Technique gets to the core. It concerns itself with the fight for our physical or emotional survival. It explores our primal drives-power, love, validation, money etc. It provides you with the tools to create a modern, multilayered character, built on what is exclusively you. You use what goes on in your own personal life, right now, to produce an acting that is passionate, profound and raw. The Chubbuck Technique builds on the teaching traditions that stretch back to Stanislavski and on the current advances in behavioural science and psychology.

The 12 steps:

The technique is done in twelve steps. It begins with text analysis to expose what drives the character- to avoid clichées and to avoid being judgemental of anything human. Next you look for emotional parallells in your own life, and you lend your personal dreams, injustices, insecurities, gains and losses to the character. The character becomes you, and you become the character.Things you regard as your flaws and shortcomings are in fact your creative working material. When share the things you most want to hide is when you are really giving something to the audience.

I think Ivana’s technique could be boiled down to ”take the pain in your life and take the most efffective way to accomplish a goal with it.

Eva Mendez

Finally you turn your focus to your relationship to other characters and to life around you. Whether a story is set in outer space, the 18th century salons or the Mongolian Desert, it is nevertheless the people that make us engage in the story-the people who believe in things; who fight for their survival; who don’t give up, regardless of how huge the obstacles may be; who refuse to become victims. Ivana Chubbuck runs Ivana Chubbuck Studio in Los Angeles. She is regarded by many as Hollywood’s foremost acting coach, and she has worked with several of the most important actors and coached Oscar winning performances. In her book ”The Power of the Actor” she describes the 12 step techique, as well as exercises to create organic fear, sadness, being a mother/father, feelings of being drunk or on drugs, sexual chemestry with your scene partner etc.

Some performances coached by Ivana Chubbuck:

• Halle Berry -Monster’s Ball
• Terence Howard-Hustle and Flow
• Beyoncé Knowles-Dream girls
• Charlize Theron-Monster
• Elizabeth Sue-Leaving Las Vegas
• Catherine-Keener-Being John Malkovich
• Peggy Lipton-Twin Peaks

"Ivana Chubbuck is the premiere acting coach of the twenty-first century. Her astute knowledge of the human condition, coupled with her ability to translate that insight to her students, is remarkable. Ivana's innovative methods of teaching both complement and rival those methods of the great teachers of the past. Her philosophy transcends what we once knew about the art and forces actors through their own catharsis to discover authentic ways of bringing the complexity of life to the screen and stage. Under Ivana's tutelage, the course of my career and depth of my work have changed dramatically.”

Halle Berry