By Deepa SeetharamanThe Daily Northwestern
Equal-opportunity offender Sarah Silverman will speak at Northwestern in two weeks, A&O chairwoman Rachel Cort said Monday night.
Silverman is slated to speak at Pick-Staiger Concert Hall at 8 p.m. Feb. 15. She will do one hour of stand-up comedy and play clips from her show on Comedy Central, “The Sarah Silverman Program.” The event is a joint effort by Fiedler Hillel Center and A&O Productions.
“We really think she’s on the edge of being a breakout star,” said Cort, a Weinberg senior. “She’s a great caliber speaker.”
Hillel approached A&O about bringing Silverman to campus last fall, said Justin Shapiro, chairman of the Hillel Speakers Committee. This will be the second time Hillel and A&O have co-organized an event this year. In the fall, the two groups collaborated to bring Jeremy Piven, star of the HBO hit “Entourage.”
Silverman got her start on “Saturday Night Live” in 1993, after dropping out of New York University. She had bit parts in movies such as “There’s Something About Mary” in 1998 and “Heartbreakers” in 2001. In 2005, she wrote and starred in the movie “Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic.”
The 36-year-old comedian is known for her irreverence, often shocking humor. She stirred controversy when she used a racial slur during a stand-up routine on the “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” show in 1993. In the 2005 movie “The Aristocrats,” Silverman deadpanned that television host Joe Franklin, 79, raped her. Franklin then threatened to sue.
Silverman’s new show, which debuted Feb. 1, tells the life story through skits and songs of a character also named Sarah Silverman. In one episode, her character invites a homeless man to spend the night in her laundry room.
“Who’s ready to spend his first night not being stabbed by drunken teenagers?” she asks the man, who is still sleeping inside his cardboard box.
When the man asks for food, Silverman declines. “You’re going to think that food is just this free thing that you don’t have to earn,” she says, smiling. “And in a way, it’s going to make you homeless-er.”
Shapiro, a Communication junior, said Silverman represents a “modern Jewish woman,” by breaking stereotypes.
“She’s just so out there,” he said. “She gives Judaism a new face … We like people who can accept and show others that you don’t have be like everyone else.”
Tickets cost $5 and will go on sale Monday, Feb. 12. Doors open at 7:30 p.m.
Reach Deepa Seetharaman at [email protected].
