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.

Autorentext
Tanya is a Senior Lecturer and Programme Leader of Undergraduate Theatre, Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, and acknowledged to be one of Australia's leading actor trainers. She is an award-winning performance maker, theatre director, actor and teaching artist MARY LUCKHURST is Professor of Modern Drama and a founder of the new Department of Theatre, Film and Television at the University of York, UK.

Inhalt
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