What technique do you teach?

We use the Chubbuck Technique. It was created by the founder of the studio, Ivana Chubbuck. The technique builds on teaching traditions that stretch back to Stanislavski and infuses them with current advances in behavioral science and psychology. The Chubbuck Technique has grown and evolved over the twenty-five years that Ivana has been teaching acting into a set of tools that have proven to be powerful, effective, and accessible. It simply works.

In order to recreate real human behavior and create a genuine performance, we teach you to go to the source of what motivates human behavior. We focus on script analysis from the viewpoint of the science of behavior - how and why people really behave. Thus, we look at the psyche of the character in the script and see how that particular character negotiates life. Then, using the Chubbuck Technique, we will teach you to replicate the character from your own personal needs and life experiences. This creates a character that is vivid, authentic, and living in the moment. It allows for one-of-a-kind affectations and mannerisms to truly emerge in your performance. The Chubbuck Technique teaches you to embody a character so that the character becomes you, and you become the character.

There are certain human, primal constants regarding what one seeks from life. These are the needs that dictate our behavior. However, it is how an individual manifests his or her needs that make us all wonderfully unique. We are creatures of action, emanating from the survival instinct that is both physical and emotional. Focusing on this part of a character produces a multidimensional human being, rather than what we think a human being would act like. The Chubbuck Technique also helps recreate the actions of a dynamic individual. We watch film, television, and theater to see not the ordinary or dull, but extraordinary people - how a person dealing with pain and trauma overcomes and wins, by using that pain as a fuel.