DeAnne Smith is as personable and charming as she is daring and surprising. A frequent visitor to our shores, the Canadian-American comedian cites Gopals and Lentil As Anything as two of her favourite go-to spots, but her Australian comedy festival tours are significant to her for several reasons. “I feel like I’ve grown a lot as a comedian in Australia,” she reflects. “I feel very attuned to Australian audiences because I developed a lot there.
“When I first started, people would say that I seemed really comfortable on stage,” Smith recalls. “I would joke around and say, ‘oh, I seem comfortable on stage because I’m equally uncomfortable everywhere, so it doesn’t really matter – put me anywhere and I have the same anxiety and the same issues’. It’s great to feel like I started off that way, but more and more I’m becoming comfortable on stage and doing comedy has made me more comfortable in the world in general. It really fulfils me on every level.”
As a kid, she watched comedy on TV with her dad: “Back then I really liked Roseanne Barr and Paula Poundstone, and Ellen DeGeneres, of course. I didn’t know that that’s what I would do, but I remember being curious about how anyone ever arrived at that point. My absolute favourite is Maria Bamford.”
Smith started stand-up comedy a decade ago. “I did my very first open mic and then I just never stopped,” she enthuses. “I would say that it’s definitely the one thing that has really challenged me as a person, so it feels like the right thing. It also brings up all these self-growth things for me, like the first time you have a really bad show you need to decide what you’re going to do with that and how you’re going to overcome that and, you know, keep going. I learn a lot about myself as I’m doing it, even just in terms of things like fear of commitment. I’ve learned to make plans, you know, 18 months in advance because that’s what you have to do with comedy sometimes when booking shows and festivals. And that never felt comfortable to me with anything, but with comedy I can do it.”
Smith won the Best Female Stand-Up Award at the 2014 Canadian Comedy Awards. Her new show at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Get Into It, will be her most personal to date. “I always like doing personal comedy,” says Smith. “I like digging into real issues that I have and making them fun. And so the idea behind Get Into It was to challenge myself to be just as hilarious, but even more personal and digging into more real stuff about life and what I find funny.”
Smith is glad that stand-up comedians are increasingly using comedy to address important social issues such as racism, feminism and equality. “I think it’s probably one of the most effective ways of getting a message across because people are entertained and they’re laughing – they’re likely to have their ears open and want to have their ears open to hear what you have to say,” Smith ponders.
“There are always feminist undercurrents or overtones in my work because that’s just how it is. In the past, I’ve definitely taken some swipes at racism. I can definitely say that there will some of that this year and stuff about gay marriage, which is kind of a different topic here than it is in Canada where it’s been legal for ten years.”
Smith believes there’s greater diversity in comedy nowadays: “I feel like there’s more visible and more vocal voices that are not the typical, older, straight, white male voice. I feel like I’ve seen that change in the last ten years.”
BY CHRISTINE LAN
