Comic Hannah Berner Returns to Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center

Comedian Hannah Berner returns to the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center on Sunday, September 3, just three weeks after a sold-out performance there.

Berner is a video creator, podcaster, former “Summer House” cast member, and since 2019, a stand-up comic. She’s currently touring, but for her WHBPAC shows she doesn’t have to travel — she has a home in Westhampton, where she spends much of her summer.

She describes her stand-up show as like a female locker room, where nothing is off-limits. “The girls enjoy it, and then the guys are like, ‘Oh, this is actually pretty insightful,’” she said during a recent interview.

“I joke about anxiety. I talk about mental health. I talk about a lot of just like random, relatable stuff in terms of your relationship to yourself and other people,” she said.

She wrote much of her material while single, she said, but now she’s married — she wed fellow comedian Des Bishop on the beach in Westhampton last year — and she jokes about that too.

“Seven years ago, before I even got into comedy, I saw him at the Comedy Cellar and was like, this guy is funny and handsome, but he lives in Ireland,” she recalled. “And then when I got into comedy, we ended up following each other on social media, but I never met him. And then because of the pandemic I was out in Shelter Island, he was out in Westhampton and he ended up messaging me.”

They got coffee in Sag Harbor and fell in love, she said.

Berner grew up in Brooklyn, spending summers and winter weekends on Shelter Island. She said with a laugh that it was her dream to meet a guy with a house out east because that’s her lifestyle.

“Whenever we can, we come out here to get a break from the city, and we spent all of COVID here. And honestly we love the fall and the spring too, when it’s really quiet,” she said.

Before the pandemic arrived and Berner took shelter on the East End, she had been planning her first stand-up tour. Needless to say, the pandemic derailed her plans.

“It definitely makes you question, ‘Do I really want this?’ when the universe kind of puts it at a halt,” she said. “But during COVID was when I started my podcast ‘Giggly Squad,’ and I was doing my podcast ‘Berning in Hell.’ And I met Des — and Des is an incredible comic — and I think I just realized this is what I want to do for the rest of my life — make people laugh.”

Comedy wasn’t always her chosen career path.

“I actually always wanted to be a tennis player,” she said.

She started out playing on her grandfather’s tennis court on Shelter Island and later taught tennis on the island.

“I was always a silly goofy person, but I had athletic prowess,” she said. “So I got put into tennis. I got a full scholarship at [the University of] Wisconsin. And then after tennis, I was like, I want to be that creative little girl again, who was goofy and funny. And I never thought I was going to be a stand-up comedian, but I really did kind of fall into it.”

She built her comedy chops writing tweets and sketches, and making videos and podcasts, and her friends encouraged her to try a live podcast show and stand-up. Her stand-up debut was at Carolines on Broadway, and she realized it’s what she wanted to be doing.

“I felt very comfortable on stage after being a tennis player where it was so nerve wracking to compete,” she recalled.

When the world opened back up again, Berner’s stand-up career quickly got back on track. In 2022 she was chosen as one of the Just for Laughs comedy festival’s New Faces of Comedy, and this year Variety named her one of its 10 Comics to Watch.

She has also amassed a following of 2.7 million fans on TikTok, where she posts podcast clips, stand-up crowdwork and her popular “Han on the Street” interview series.

Berner records “Han on the Street” outside The Stand, a Union Square comedy club where she performs. Between her stand-up spots, she interviews fellow comics, asking for their opinions on off-color topics and quizzing them with questions such as “What’s a diva cup?” and “What is gaslighting?”

“I just love asking guys questions that make them uncomfortable,” she said. “And then we added the female comics too, and it’s become kind of a larger series. I actually thought of the idea when I was in Westhampton though, in the car with Des, driving home from Bun & Burger.”

She said she asks the comics not to try to be funny, but to be vulnerable.

“It’s fun too, because you get to meet new people and ask them whatever questions,” she said. I’ve always loved interviewing even when I was a kid.”

She’s always been interested in understanding people and had a journalistic side, she said. When she was very young, she would take a notepad to dinner at a restaurant and ask the waiter why he wanted to be a waiter, and she would write up what happened at her father’s tennis matches.

Berner has interviewed scores of comedians and others about “their biggest insecurities, fears, anxieties and regrets” for “Berning in Hell,” but just this month she has retooled the podcast and renamed it “Berner Phone.” The new concept is that she and her husband respond to listeners’ voice messages in response to prompts such as “most embarrassing moments” and “pet peeves.”

She also continues to co-host “Giggly Squad” with her best friend Paige DeSorbo, including live shows around the United States and Canada.

And when Berner is not on the road, she and Bishop foster dogs in Westhampton.

“When I met Des during the pandemic, he was fostering animals at Southampton Animal Shelter — and I was like this close to quitting everything and becoming a dog trainer at Southampton Animal Shelter,” she said.

She shares the dogs on her social media channels and said that they have helped more than seven dogs get adopted.

“We’re now with this current dog Abby who’s like the cutest — one of my favorites. And we’re working on getting adopted but also deep down Des’s brother [Aidan] wants to adopt her,” she said.

Berner said though she and her husband love all the dogs so much, they travel too much to keep any. “We always say you adopt, you save one dog, when you foster you save many,” she said.

Hannah Berner performs at the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center on Sunday, September 3, at 8 p.m. Tickets range from $47 to $64. Call 631-288-1500, visit whbpac.org or visit the box office at 76 Main Street, Westhampton Beach.