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.

Tanya Gerstle

Foreword by Mary Luckhurst, University of York, UK 1. Introduction to the Pulse Approach 2. Pulse Training Workbook: An Approach to Ensemble Practice Introduction The Pulse Canvas Phase One: Developing Kinaesthetic awareness Phase Two: Making Connections Phase Three: Working Attitude Phase Four: Learning a Shared Language Phase Five: Expanding the Action Vocabulary Phase Six: The Pulse Sketch Phase Seven: Adding Sound to the Physical World Phase Eight: Speaking on the Canvas Performance Improvisation Case Study: Visions of Paradise (or you should have been here yesterday) 3. Directing Workbook: Working with Pulse on a Script Introduction Part One: Inner Life revealed Through Action Rehearsal Practice, Rehearsal Process, Rehearsal Concepts Part Two: Case Studies (The Mill on the Floss, Pericles Punished, Five Kinds of Silence, Stage Beauty and Manbeth: Macbeth Amplified) 4. In Conversation with Practitioners Introduction Pulse as a Framework Training Working with Pulse on a Script A 'Living Practice' Notes on Interviewees 5. Appendices Ensemble Practice Tasks Skill Focus Tasks Integrating Design Elements and Audience Alternative Applications Towards an Original Performance Text - Case Study: Invisible Stains Bibliography Index