Exploring the highs, lows and insecurities of two individuals in their early 20s, Anything with a Pulse is a comic story of modern-day dating and will play at Park Theatre as part of Make Mine a Double Season.
In this fast-paced performance, two actors transition between a vast array of different characters, accents and physicalities to build the narrative around the two main love interests who meet on the dance floor, slipping between first and third-person dialogue directed at the audience. Anything with a Pulse featured in Park Theatre’s Pick of the Fringe season in 2019, after a successful run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe that summer.
Spotting each other from across the dance floor, they hit it off. Their story should be simple enough. But in a world where we hide behind games and personas, it doesn’t always play out like that. He tries to fit in with his macho group of friends and she is torn between feeling comfortable with the unexciting ‘nice guy’, or facing the games and pretences of modern dating.
Make Mine a Double is a season of four shows starting mid-November and running for four weeks, programmed to give emerging artists and companies a chance to present their work in short run double bills. The new strand of work aims to give theatre makers a lower-cost and lower-risk way of producing new work in the Finsbury Park venue, as well as offering multi-buy tickets to encourage local audiences to see compelling new work. Anything With a Pulse is programmed in a double bill with Pickle is a darkly comic one-woman show about being Jewish and secular in the UK today. The second half of the season (28 Nov – 10 Dec) is made up of Tunnels and Press.
Writer and director Eliana Ostro said, “After an overwhelmingly positive reception at the Fringe, and a sold-out debut at The Park, we are so excited to be back! This play tries to capture a very specific phase of life – a time full of insecurity, loneliness, promise, and a general lack of direction. A moment when people often find themselves trying to be a louder, more amplified version of themselves – before knowing who they really are.”
Eliana Ostro’s debut play, Open Road was transferred to the King’s Head Theatre after a successful run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2017. Anything With a Pulse is her second play, and her directorial debut. She graduated from the University of Manchester, with a degree in English and Drama. She completed her MFA in dramatic writing at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.
Anything With A Pulse is at Park Theatre 14 Nov – 26 Nov 2022
