Austin Smartt: Why Are You People So Supportive?!

When talk­ing about this week’s guest, Austin Smartt, you can’t help but address the ele­phants in the room. I’m refer­ring of course to the scene with ice rink cop­u­lat­ing ele­phants in the awful(ly good) movie Love Guru, that Smartt read­i­ly admits she loves (and I have a bit of a well-hid­den soft spot for as well). She’s also a trans­gen­der woman, but we’ll get to that in a bit; it’s not the core of her story.

Born in tiny Bon­ham, Texas, Smart­t’s ear­ly expo­sure to the com­e­dy films of Mike Mey­ers like Austin Pow­ers in Gold­mem­ber, por­tend­ed her fate. The inane, yet lov­ing­ly crass, ele­ments in films like Gold­mem­ber and Love Guru imprint­ed ear­ly on in her ethos that com­e­dy isn’t always crass, but can be sin­ful­ly enjoy­able when it is, all the same.

Smart­t’s ​“for­mal” stage train­ing start­ed in UIL (Uni­ver­si­ty Inter­scholas­tic League) impromp­tu and per­sua­sive speak­ing, before get­ting her chance in the school the­ater pro­gram. As her inter­ests in per­form­ing and mak­ing peo­ple laugh evolved, she got deep­er into stand-up greats like Dave Chapelle and George Car­lin: comics unafraid to share their opin­ions freely, and bring the audi­ence around to them along the way. It was an ear­ly les­son for Smartt that comedic writ­ing can feel dark and extreme, but, when deliv­ered with elo­quence and pur­pose, will draw peo­ple into your world immediately.

While Smartt had ques­tions and inter­est in find­ing her iden­ti­ty and sex­u­al­i­ty, it was after the move to Austin (the city) – in her senior year – that she found the wel­com­ing, expan­sive cul­ture and com­mu­ni­ty that enabled her to explore the per­son inside she knew was intend­ed to be. Soon after, she found the irre­sistible draw to the open mic stage that we know often becomes the begin­ning of the jour­ney for bud­ding pro­fes­sion­al comedians.

Smartt had the almost tra­di­tion­al rough start the first time behind the mic, but her tra­jec­to­ry was set and she’s now a main­stay on Austin stages, where we hope she’ll con­tin­ue for years to come. She’s already com­pet­ed in Fun­ni­est Per­son in Austin, and Out of Bounds, and Moon­tow­er Com­e­dy fes­ti­vals. In the inter­view, it’s such a joy to hear her excite­ment at the oppor­tu­ni­ties, past and future, that abound in her rel­a­tive­ly new­found pro­fes­sion and home.

Her most recent project is the Gen­der Flu­ids pod­cast with Arielle Nor­man. Explor­ing the bound­aries of sex­u­al iden­ti­ty (and indeed of human­i­ty in gen­er­al), Gen­der Flu­ids is a delight­ful mix and bal­ance of seri­ous intro­spec­tion and extreme hilar­i­ty, host­ed by two peo­ple still fig­ur­ing out who they are, and how to sur­vive and thrive at life. (Aren’t we all?)

Fol­low Austin Smartt on Twit­ter, Insta­gram, and catch her in the SLIME­TIME standup show Dec 13^th at Cold­town Theatre.