{"id":33397,"date":"2019-10-04T03:59:20","date_gmt":"2019-10-04T10:59:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=33397"},"modified":"2019-10-02T15:36:48","modified_gmt":"2019-10-02T22:36:48","slug":"chutzpah-hosts-bernhard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2019\/10\/04\/chutzpah-hosts-bernhard\/","title":{"rendered":"Chutzpah! hosts Bernhard"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sandra Bernhard is at the Vogue on Halloween night, as part of the Chutzpah! Festival. (photo by Brian Ziegler)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was a little kid, I had three older brothers and I got a lot of attention for being cute and funny, and I\u2019ve always had an ability to comment on situations as they unfolded in front of me,\u201d said veteran performer Sandra Bernhard in a phone interview with the Jewish Independent<\/em>. \u201cI think that\u2019s what kept it going all these years \u2013 I find it entirely hilarious when you\u2019re in the middle of something and you\u2019re able to pull it apart and bring the most humour out of it, or the most outrage, and that\u2019s always been the most interesting part of what I do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bernhard is bringing her critically acclaimed show Quick Sand<\/em> to the Vogue Theatre on Oct. 31 as part of the Chutzpah! Festival, which runs Oct. 24-Nov. 24. The comedian, actor, author and radio host is known for her outspokenness. She said it\u2019s second nature for her to say what\u2019s on her mind. \u201cBy being funny and being a character, which I\u2019ve always been,\u201d she said, \u201cthat gave me the access to say things that other people wouldn\u2019t say necessarily, or that wouldn\u2019t be heard.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bernhard\u2019s daily radio show, Sandyland<\/em>, which is on SiriusXM\u2019s Radio Andy channel (created by Andy Cohen), earned her a Gracie Award, an honour given by the Alliance for Women in Media to \u201crecognize exemplary programming created by women, for women and about women in all facets of media and entertainment.\u201d Bernhard also stars as Nurse Judy in the award-winning, boundary-pushing show Pose<\/em> on FX Networks, about \u201cthe legends, icons and ferocious house mothers of New York\u2019s underground ball culture, a movement that first gained notice in the 1980s.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bernhard has countless film and television credits, has created and performed several one-woman shows, recorded a few albums and performed with or opened for many artists. She also has written three books.<\/p>\n

While she knew from a young age that she wanted to be a performer, it wasn\u2019t until her late teens that the goal started to become a reality.<\/p>\n

\u201cI moved to L.A. in the mid-\u201970s, when I was 18, 19,\u201d she said. \u201cI became a manicurist in Beverly Hills, so I had a day gig, but I didn\u2019t really know how I was going to jump into the waters, because I also wanted to be a singer. I really wanted to be an entertainer, the whole package.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then I met up with a group of friends and they thought I was hysterical and then there was this woman I met who, I did her nails and she was a cabaret singer and she would go to the open mic nights and she said, \u2018You\u2019re really funny. I know you want to sing, but put your material together and I\u2019ll take you to these open mic nights.\u2019 She took me to one and then I met my friend Paul Mooney and my friend Lotus Weinstock the first night I got up and they took me under their wings. And that\u2019s how I started \u2013 I literally fell into it, because I was a natural, and then I started doing the hard work, which was getting up night after night after night to do my act, and I honed my act and the material and then, eventually, I got good at it.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the reasons she remains popular and her material fresh is because she keeps working at it, \u201cfinding different ways into it. For me,\u201d she said, \u201cthe most important thing is being as authentic as I can, year to year, day to day, because you do change, you evolve as a person, you want to peel the layers of the onion away and get deeper into your core as an artist, as a performer, and I think that\u2019s what continues to inspire you and make you a better performer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Describing her style as \u201cedgy, funny, strong, no nonsense, but funny nonsense,\u201d she said, \u201cI don\u2019t feel like I have to really temper anything because you shed your skin as you go along, and certain things just don\u2019t work anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

Born in Flint, Mich., and raised in Scottsdale, Ariz., Bernhard was bat mitzvahed, but, she said, \u201cMy father, I don\u2019t think he related to being Jewish much at all, except maybe culturally, and my grandparents \u2013 my grandfather went to shul every day but I think that was a little bit later in life. When he came over here from Russia, everybody was busy trying to make a living. And, of course, people ended up in some small towns here and there, and you didn\u2019t always have time for your religion and your traditions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, Bernhard said, \u201cI find a certain amount of meditative escape just going to Shabbat and hearing the music and the songs I grew up with, and I like the community. Whether it\u2019s the High Holidays or staying for kiddush and eating a bowl of cholent, there\u2019s something very visceral about it. It connects me with who I was as a kid and my grandparents\u2026. There\u2019s all that emotion, it\u2019s vivid and visceral and it\u2019s just a nice place to calm down and go into and have a little bit of a break from the day to day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Saying that she\u2019s \u201cthrilled to be coming back to Vancouver,\u201d Bernhard said the Oct. 31 performance will be \u201ca fun night.\u201d Accompanied by the Sandyland Squad Band, she will combine music, comedy and social commentary in Quick Sand<\/em>, which, she said, offers \u201cendless amounts of room\u201d for her to go off script.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m always prepared to jump off if something happens or inspires me or the thought process, my mind, and that\u2019s the way it\u2019s always been for me,\u201d she said. \u201cBut I also have very set pieces that you want to be able to fall back on and have that continuity to the show, so that you\u2019re not standing up there just talking about a bunch of silliness. I want people to walk away having been entertained.\u201d<\/p>\n

For tickets to Bernhard and other Chutzpah! shows, visit chutzpahfestival.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sandra Bernhard is at the Vogue on Halloween night, as part of the Chutzpah! Festival. (photo by Brian Ziegler) \u201cWhen I was a little kid, I had three older brothers and I got a lot of attention for being cute and funny, and I\u2019ve always had an ability to comment on situations as they unfolded […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33398,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[785],"tags":[31,5278,9275,9011],"class_list":["post-33397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-performing-arts","tag-chutzpah","tag-comedy","tag-sandra-bernhard","tag-social-commentary"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}