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Jill Bernard

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"The Queen of Improv in Minneapolis" - Chicago Magazine

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art by Mike Short based on a photo by Jason DeFillipo

"The Queen of Improv in Minneapolis" - Chicago Magazine | Media List


Statement

Click here for upcoming performances and here for a resume ok !

Reviews

Juneau Empire feature article: http://juneauempire.com/stories/061004/loc_madbeats.shtml

“Jill Bernard is an improvised musical comedy,” - NBC 10 morning show, Philadelphia, 11/5/04

“Bernard performs with her hair tied up in two little buns on top of her head, a Minnie-meets-Princess-Leia effect. During a performance, it becomes apparent that they mask little antennae which channel energy like the electrified cables on a bumper car.” - Anne Ursu, City Pages, 10/14/98

“‘Ibsen was being metaphorical,’ the program reads. ‘We're not.’ And therein lies the explanation for one of the most delightful and peculiar features in the Fringe--a staged reading of Ibsen's overwrought one-act of gender liberation, mounted in a tiny, four-foot-by-four-foot cubby at the back of the Acadia's basement. It's a playing area so small that actors must double over to stand and must necessarily step on and push past each other simply to move. This renders lines such as ‘I've been struggling under the most restrictive circumstances,’ hilariously literal. Director Jill Bernard has discovered a gimmicky and ingenious way to illuminate some of the desperation and panic in the text.” – Max Sparber, City Pages, 8/2/00

"Funniest gal in town!" - Dean Seal, Skyway News, 1/28/02

“In one sketch written by Bernard, two women who share an identical name, identical threadbare sweaters, and an identical adenoidal voice, show up to the same date with Joseph Scrimshaw. (The pseudo twins are played by Bernard and dancer Adrienne English, who is Joseph Scrimshaw's wife). They bring with them an unopened envelope, addressed to a third woman of the same name, inviting her out to dinner. As long as the envelope remains unopened, they argue, Joseph Scrimshaw has invited not only one of the three out to dinner, but all three at the same time. And when Scrimshaw, in a frustrated rage, tears open the envelope, the two women howl simultaneously that he has disrupted the universe, and begin to spin around each other as though the universe were, indeed, collapsing in on itself. The name of the sketch is "Schroedinger's Date," based on physicist's Erwin Schroedinger's somewhat obtuse paradox of quantum mechanics, involving a cat, a closed steel box containing a radioactive substance that might trigger some murderous device, and the (im)possibility that the cat might be at once dead and alive. This is not exactly sketch comedy that shoots for the lowest common denominator, despite the frequent presence of rubber chickens.” - Max Sparber, City Pages, 2/21/01

St. Paul Pioneer Press 7/10/05 feature article by Matt Peiken: (must register). Quotes:
"It's a Wednesday night, and Bernard is dressed for work — punker-shaved black hair festooned with magenta bangs and sprouts, black shirt fronted by a British flag, black lip- and eyeliner, black hose and a Catholic-school plaid skirt designed to show more cheek than chastity.

Bernard, who turns 33 later this month, promises this is the last Twin Cities performance she is giving, ever, of what must rank among the bravest and most captivating solo shows concocted for a local stage.

"Drum Machine" stars Bernard and the Zoom RhythmTrak 123, an electronic machine loaded with a few hundred drumbeats, bass lines and generic songs.

Each unscripted performance starts with Bernard coaxing words or phrases from her audience to serve as seeds of inspiration. She then asks someone in the audience for a number — between 70 and whatever, to steer clear of the audience-popular 69 — and dials up that numbered beat on the RhythmTrak. She keys the tempo up or down and, from there, wings it. Bernard develops characters and storylines and songs, all on the fly, unfolding into a manic musical."
"The first suggestions tossed up are "Keep it simple" and "People with problems," along with a number Bernard buttons into her RhythmTrak. The machine serves up a midtempo, hip-hopped beat. Bernard closes her eyes and grooves into her own world for a moment, then reverses the sentences and cues each half of the audience to rap, coming up with the sentence "People with problems keep it simple."

Soon, Bernard slowly spins a story about an 85-year-old woman who uses a wheelchair only for the fun of it and is planning to spend her Christmas shopping out of a catalog, punctuating her breaks with little growls and audience raps. Other suggestions inspire her to construct a romantic musical, featuring flashbacks, between Abbie Hoffman and the attorney prosecuting him for crashing the Democratic National Convention."



THE QUOTABLE JILL BERNARD

"Be scared of rattlesnakes and global warming. Don't be scared of improv. Don't be scared of the Head of HR."

"You can't put mayonnaise in a suitcase and expect triumph."

"Whatever is fun - do it more."

"Sometimes it is enough to know you are right and keep it to yourself."

"Your job is not to create an army of perfect improvisors. You will see the moment - and it will happen - where you accidentally break someone's will to improvise by saying, 'No, do it this way.' That is not your job. Instead, your job is to EDUCE what is already there. Draw out the improv that is inside this person, don't cram your perfect vision on top of them."