The Pulse Approach

How can we effectively apply improvisation to train an ensemble of actors?

Where is the method to create physically dynamic staging for text-based contemporary and classical plays?

And how can a trainer and a director utilise improvisation to devise new work?

The Pulse Approach answers these questions and more, captured here for the first time in a workbook to the practice.

Pulse is an improvisational performance strategy that can be used by actors and directors to develop original text-based performance material and rehearse dramatic scripts. Director Tanya Gerstle has been developing the approach since 1989 and has used it to stage more than 25 theatre productions.

Through step-by-step instructions for the student and practitioner; troubleshooting advice; case studies of productions directed using the Pulse Approach; and interviews with practitioners involved, this book is the first practical guide to this innovative methodology, which has its roots in the Australian actor-training scene.

The Pulse Approach fuses improvisation and text-based theatre, too often disconnected, to offer up a methodology and rigorous practice for improvisation as a holistic process of development in classical and contemporary plays. It can be used to train any ensemble of actors in any context— inexperienced, professional, young, old, and culturally and linguistically diverse.

A companion website will include a video documentary of practitioners using Pulse in their work with the author.