Improv Warrior (n.) Someone who goes above and beyond the call of duty. An improvisor, who is not just a performer, but lives and breaths improv, heightens the art, cares for the art and brings it to new levels.
Today’s Improv Warrior is Jill Bernard. I have had the pleasure of performing with Jill and bumping into her at practically every festival in the country. She is an amazing teacher and an amazing talent. But beyond that she is just a wonderful human being. Jill recently celebrated 20 Years as an improvisor and celebrated it in a major way! –Nick Armstrong
Here is what she had to say:
From Jill Bernard:
On Sunday December 1, 2013 I did a show called “JILLVITATIONAL: 20 duos in 12 hours to celebrate 20 years” – the length of time since I began improvising.
My favorite part was the sensation of each new partner. Jeff Wirth has taught me many things, but one little interesting tidbit is to read how an audience volunteer wants to play when brought up onstage. Are they a clinical person or an emotional person? I thought of that concept a lot during my twenty duos, because each pairing was an opportunity to be the scene partner my friend was asking for. When someone steps onstage, they’re proposing a game. If your opening line is, “I don’t know, Edgar, perhaps this climb was too ambitious, the temperature’s dropping faster than we could’ve predicted,” you’re basically saying, “Hello, would you like to play doomed mountain expedition with me, in a slightly old-fashioned and serious style?” and my answer will be yes yes a million times yes thank you, let’s let’s.
I was charmed by the opportunity to do so twenty times in a row, especially since I am rather infamous for being an ungenerous player who will drag your corpse behind the sled of my agenda. It felt like a lovely challenge to play the Venn Diagram of just the two of us to the nth degree, in the Viola Spolin sense of ‘following the follower.’
I picked twenty friends but I could’ve picked a million friends. The feeling I was left with after it was all over was “Oh, what’s wrong with the limits of my body and my brain that I can’t just keep doing this hour after hour and get to share the stage with everyone ever?” Being alone with just another person is the full dose of them. It’s the extra virgin million parts per million version of their aesthetic, and you get to take a bath in it. I could get used to that. Trish Berrong and I neared the final moments of the final duo and my eyes filled with tears for all the gratitude I felt in that moment – gratitude that Trish Berrong and Bailey Williams would come up from Kansas City, Lindsay Gonzales would come from Chicago; Samantha Pereira , Katy Kessler, Kelvin Hatle, Eric Heiberg, Doug Neithercott , Lauren Anderson and Josh Kuehn would come do improv before noon; Butch Roy would play and let me use our theater for this silly project all day long; Mary Strutzel, Eric Knobel and James Moore who were alongside me when I started would still be alongside me now; Clay Macartney, Bernard Armada would just hop into the unknown; Nate Morse would bring me a cat piano; Meghan Wolff, Jason Bindas and Carolyn Blomberg would be those kinds of friends who will play with you just because; and for everyone who came to watch and cheer and bartend and tech and box office. That’s a lot to be emotionally touched by, especially after a long day fueled by mostly Topperstix and runner’s Goo.
It was good, it was fun, but I won’t make an annual event of it as it’s exceedingly odd? arrogant? pathetic? to make up an event named after yourself. I did it because, as I told a reporter, “Improvisational comedy is the kind of an unsustainable ridiculous career where you ask yourself what you’re doing with your life every 12 months or so. I used this idea to kind of cheer myself up. It’s also an uncelebrated art form. Improvised theater is not even eligible for an Ivey award, none of the newspapers or online calendars have an ‘improv comedy’ section. As a result, improvisers can’t sit around waiting for recognition, we have to celebrate ourselves.” I feel so celebrated now. What a wonderful boost to spur me on for twenty more years.
Nick Armstrong
Nick is Camp Director and Founder of Improv Utopia an improv retreat for grown ups in California and Pennsylvania. He is also one of the founding members of the National Improv Network. We are always looking for better ways to serve the community. Drop us a line and let us know what you want! To e-mail nick e-mail nick@nationalimprovnetwork.com. For more information visit: http://www.nickarmstrong.com or http://www.improvutopia.com
