Biography
Jill Bernard (she/her) has been performing with ComedySportz-Twin Cities since 1993, and is a founding member of HUGE Theater in Minneapolis. Her one-woman improv piece, Drum Machine, has been featured in over forty improv festivals. She has taught and performed improv in Argentina, Australia, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Colombia, England, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates and in over forty of the United States; and also on an episode of MTV “Made.”
Drum Machine is Jill Bernard's one-person sweepingly epic unscripted musical featuring multiple characters in scenes, monologues and songs accompanied by electronic drum beats or in collaboration with a musician. The show opens with a brief interview of an audience member, then Bernard creates a musical that weaves details of their life into a historical period suggested by the audience. (Watch examples from Phoenix, Minneapolis, another from Minneapolis or see a 3 minute egg feature. Read a nice piece by Ira Booker about it here. )
More information: https://jillbernard3.blogspot.com/
Jill’s Workshops
Being a Dream Partner -Masterclass
Improv is rarely a solo endeavor. This workshop will focus on how you can become the best possible partner your teammates could imagine. Games and exercises showing how to listen to what your partner really wants and turn them into a rockstar. If we’re all doing this for each other, we’re a team of rockstars and we all win!
Turning the Corner
This workshop is a survey of methods to turn the corner on a scene that has stalled out and is struggling to progress.
Truth and Beauty
(Note: better for mid-sized groups of experienced students)
In this workshop, Jill Bernard will take you through a series of exercises that inject your work with a little bit of truth and beauty. Having the ability to create improv that is honest and vulnerable adds another layer to your work, a little bit of cake underneath your frosting to take your work from light entertainment to something with resonance. Please wear closed toe shoes to this workshop.
Vapapo: Character Toolkit
Jill Bernard offers a character toolkit to give participants the ability to create strong, compelling characters that they can hang onto through the whole scene. This session will focus on using Voice, Attitude or Posture, and Animal, Prop or Obsession to build instant characters. Participants will use these tools to fearlessly initiate scenes, create relationships and find agreement. Please wear closed toe shoes to this workshop.
Mixer Format: "Between Jokes"
Participants will learn the skills and form of an improvised piece created by Bernard called “Between Jokes". The format is based on a Spanish saying: "Entre broma y broma la verdad se asoma/Between a joke and a joke the truth arises." A classic children’s joke appears on the screen behind the performers (or from a slip of paper), they read it aloud and then create a scene based in the reality the joke proposes. A skeleton may mourn the loss of its ghoulfriend, or a bicycle might quit its job because it’s two-tired, all with loving playful gravitas. Very silly but very sweet. Prepares a group of 8 to 16 students for a short performance.
