Between the Acts: What comedian DeAnne Smith got up to over the holidays

In Between the Acts, The Globe and Mail takes a look at how artists manage their time before and after a creative endeavour.

On DeAnne Smith's Twitter profile, the agender Canadian-American comedian is described as a "gentleman elf." Just what does a wisecracking elf get up to over the Christmas season? The wry (and often candid and occasionally zippy) Smith discusses winter habits and family funny business.

My family is quite small, and so is our holiday celebration. My girlfriend and her mother and myself and our little chihuahua got in the car and drove 13 hours to Tennessee to visit my 92-year-old grandma. I don't feel pressure to be funny, but humour is very appreciated in that group. Everybody's throwing zingers around.

My grandma is intentionally funny, but also unintentionally funny. She's lived a long life, and doesn't have time for much. Her timing is great. She can be unintentionally rude, and she's a great source of jokes.

The performer side of myself doesn't really square with how my family knew me growing up. My grandma noted how quiet and observant I was when I was younger. So, I'm not expected to be funny around them now. I'm very much on vacation over the holidays.

I generally go to Australia every spring with a new one-hour show to the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Along with Montreal's Just For Laughs, it's one of the biggest comedy festivals in the world. I've been doing it for the last nine years.

So, at this time of the year I'm hunkering down and working on my new hour. It involves a lot of writing and a lot of going to open mics and testing things out. Because at the end of March, I'll be debuting a new show.

This time of year coincides well with the Canadian winter. I want to stay home and be cozy and write. I don't know how my Australian peers do it, when it's summer over there.

It's quite interesting. October is the deadline where I have to have a title and a blurb for the Melbourne show, but, generally, by October, the show isn't even written yet. The idea is to write the copy to entice people to come out to see me. It's always a fun challenge to summarize a non-existent show.