Who the @#$% Is She?
One of Australia's most forefront stand-up comedians, Rachel Berger has been at the top of Aussie Comedy for some time now.
Berger first decided that she wanted to give comedy a go after watching a Bette Midler concert in the late 1970s. However, it took her a while before actually did anything about her decision.
In fact, Berger was 32 before she did her first spot. After that, she has said that it took three years of 'open mike' nights at the Last Laugh to hone her talents.
In 1989, Berger headed over to Edinburgh for the first time, also playing London's comedy circut. This was the first of many well received trips to Britain.
Berger's comedy style has changed greatly over the years, and her popularity only continues to grow.

Material
On Women's Business Magazines:
"Women's business magazines, pah-lease! With cover photos of smirky, lemon-lipped women apparently oozing with success. This translates into jackets with padded shoulders the size of Tasmania, formal shirts, trousers, maybe even a hint of a tie. Certainly no hint of breasts, waist, a neck, no soft bits. Mutton dressed as ram! We're out on parole, but still not off the hook for eating that apple. I think I'll start my own women's business magazine for the woman who has everything she wants and revels in being herself, and call it The Balls Are In Your Court, Babe!" (1990)
Taken from "Boom Boom"

In Your Own Words
On The Cheese Shop Live:
"My brain was so jangled I got dizzy. We were upstairs in the green room. Taranto or some-one suggested I put my head between my legs. Simon Munnery slipped in, a human asterix in black.
"Rachel Berger, haven't seen you since Edinburgh... you ok?"
"No, I'm freaking. I took time out, this is my first gig for about a year. I'm shitting myself. Got any advice?"
"Fuck you. You jumped ship... you deserve to die!"
Lips curled in a twisted mocking smile, he offered me his beer.
Taken from Essays On Cheese"

On Acceptance:
"When you are not a peg in a hole, and you don't have the same sense of history or background, you invariably learn how to gain acceptance from, and find commonality with, people very quickly. This is partly what shaped my style. For me, stand-up is essentially a similar experience. You have nothing but your body, mouth and personality and there you are in front of an audience of strangers - who you very quickly have to convince you are one of. Not better, not worse. For me, it's always about: we are the same."
Taken from Boom Boom

On Her First Gig:
"I did ten minutes on primal therapy and the room happened to be filled with psychiatrists. This is why I think God is a comedian, because the chances of that happening have to be one in a million. I was huge that night. After that first gig, heroin would have been easier to get off. And then I proceeded to die every week."
Taken from Boom Boom

On Being A Female Comic:
"I was one of a new breed of comics, which came to the fore in the late '80s, who no longer did material that was self-depricating. But, although I was a woman comic, I was not a women's comic. I was a woman, therefore it was the basis of my lens - the way I viewed the world - it didn't mean necessarily attacking men.
"I addressed topical issues from a woman's point of view. For example, I never did tampon jokes. In fact, on the contrary I would deconstruct advertising about tampons. At one stage there was a tampon ad on TV about two women who were lost in the middle of the desert. You know, we have no water, we have no cigarettes, but it's okay because we've got Fleur in the glovebox. So what I was saying is be aware of how advertisers are treating us - like morons."
Taken from Boom Boom

On Political Satire:
"Political satire can be so much more cutting than the other satire. But this is where I like to go. People saw me as the nice Jewish girl in the loverly frock who'd had her hair done and had her shtick. But what they got visually was very different to what was coming out of my mouth. In the past few years, politics has been an important element of my work."
Taken from Boom Boom

On Becoming A Comic: "I first realised I wanted to be a comic after seeing Bette Midler here in the seventies. I wanted to make people laugh, but had absolutely no concept of how it was done. I also had no idea of how hard it was going to be or how long it would take before I was any good. I just assumed that you went to acting school, become an actor and then specialised. That's because, being Jewish, all I knew about was doctors. Doctors studied to become doctors and then they went on and became gynaecologists or dentists or something. I though I had to become an actor and then do comedy as a specialty.
"But before I could do anything about being an actor or a comic, I got married. To a doctor! Well, not really, even thought that was what my mother wanted. I did nothing for six years except mow lawns and make chicken soup. Then I left him. And do you know what I did before I left him? I ironed all his shirts! Really. But that was before I read Andrea Dworkin."
Taken from Punchlines

On An Early Regular Strip Club Gig:
"I used to compere the lunchtime shows and got most of my jokes from Reader's Digest. There were these young women hating themselves while they took their clothes off in front of old men. Some of them were so old they used walking frames to make their way down the aisle. It was horrible.
"The patrons seemed confounded by this woman telling jokes because the last thing they wanted was a fully clothed woman doing anything, especially speaking to them. There was one old man who must have been about ninety-five; he had all his medals from the Great War. He came up to me just before Christmas and said, 'Er, are you going to, er, you know, are you going to...' I said, 'Are you asking me if I'm going to strip?' And he replied, 'Yes.' So I replied, "No.' And he said, 'What, not even for Christmas?' He thought I was going to be his Christmas surprise."
Taken from Punchlines

On The Expectations About Women Comedians:
"I remember performing a routine about female flight attendants at Le Joke one night when several women started hissing and booing. I'd never experienced this before, so during the break, I went over and asked them what the problem was. They told me I was being sexist and anti-woman, whereas I thought I was just doing a routine about the unintentional humour of airline regulations. Although I didn't agree with them on that occasion, they made me realise that there were issues about being a woman and a performer that I hadn't been aware of.
Taken from Punchlines

On Feminism And Comedy:
"I was presented with the dilemma of trying to be sensitive to these issues without pandering to the more extreme feminists who came to my shows. It was easy for me to write material that was explicitly feminist: the problem was what to wear whilst performing it. Things don't change much for a woman, do they?
"So, in addition to writing different material, I stopped wearing dresses for a while and wore jeans and a T-shirt instead. But then I began to feel that I was compromising myself as I'd always enjoyed wearing dresses and couldn't see how it was selling out to perform in them. I just didn't want to de-sex myself and take away my female form just for the sake of political correctness, so I kept all the new material and threw away my jeans.
"I concluded that although it was important to be sensitive about feminist issues in my work, it was also important for me to be myself. "When people are telling you how you ought to be, they sometimes forget things like that."
Taken from Punchlines

Live
A review of Rachel's 2000 Comedy Festival show - "Not Kosher"

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