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.

Product details

• Authors: Tanya Gerstle, Gerstle Tanya, Tanya Gerstle
• Assisted by: Mary Luckhurst (Foreword), Mary Luckhurst (Foreword)
• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Release: 19.03.2026
• EAN: 9781350524552
• ISBN: 978-1-350-52455-2
• No. of pages: 240
• Subjects: Performing Arts, Australia, PERFORMING ARTS / Theater / Direction & Production, PERFORMING ARTS / Acting & Auditioning, Theatre Studies, Individual actors and performers, Acting techniques, Theatre Direction & Production, Theatre direction and production