Courtesy: Ford Center
Filmmaker and comedian John Waters will perform his one-man act, “This Filthy World,” at 7 p.m. Saturday at the Ford Center. Tickets for the event are free but required, and attendees can pick them up at the UM Box Office in the Student Union.
Waters has experimented with nonfiction writing, filmmaking, stand-up comedy and photography, and continues to blend genres and mediums in his work. The act he will perform Saturday is an artistic nod to early vaudevillian theater. The documentary film version of the act, directed by Jeff Garlin, was released in 2006.
Square Books will host a book signing at 3 p.m. Saturday for Waters’ latest book, “Carsick: John Waters Hitchhikes Across America,” a nonfiction account of the writer’s travels and his encounters with various facets of American culture.
Square Books General Manager Lyn Roberts said the store management had requested Waters for an event previously and were excited about the opportunity to host the writer.
“He’s a very colorful person,” Roberts said. “He is sort of like an observer or social commentator from Venus.”
The Sarah Isom Center for Women and Gender Studies is hosting Saturday’s show at the Ford Center. The center also held a screening of Waters’ films, “Hairspray” and “Serial Moms,” Tuesday
Junior music education major Rachel Dennis explained her excitement for the writer and filmmaker’s visit to Oxford.
“Hairspray is probably his most widely known work, and it’s probably the most tame. But even Hairspray pushes cultural boundaries. That’s what he’s all about,” Dennis said. “I think it’s great that he’s coming here.”
Theresa Starkey, assistant director at the Sarah Isom Center, analyzed Waters’ films in terms of artistic methods.
“He is a risk taker and a genre breaker. This is evident in his early underground films. He isn’t afraid to show the ‘perceived’ outsider with humanity and humor,” Starkey said. “With this lens, he often exposes how warping labeling is and how this act comes from a place of fear or anxiety.”
Starkey asked Waters to visit by sending a letter to a Baltimore bookstore where Waters reportedly picks up fan mail. When Waters agreed, the Sarah Isom Center gathered funding from sources including Oxford Film Festival, the University Lecture Series, the UM English department, the Center for Inclusion and Cross-Cultural Engagement and private donors.
“Student inspiration made me take a chance on a long shot and write a letter to Mr. Waters that I sent to an independent bookstore in Baltimore, because I didn’t know how else to reach him,” Starkey said. “It was a long shot that paid off.”
