Listen in to the great
Eight Forty-Eight's August story on The Dollar Store.
You can
stream it, or
mp3 it. It's your world.
Check out the Sun-Times story on the January show. They
say some very nice things that we surely don't deserve.
Click that link above, friend!
And click here to listen to co-host Jonathan Messinger on the 2/26
edition of WNUR's Lit Show.
And click
here to read Chicagoist's interview with Mr. Sosenko.
Chicago
Sun-Times, 1.29.06
...you think the Dollar
Store is some kind of bargain. You're having a great time and all it
cost was a $1 cover-- a dollar.
Read the whole story here.
Chicago
Reader, 6.2.05
DARREN O'DONNELL When
Toronto-based writer and performer Darren O'Donnell hit Quimby's in
October, he delivered a monologue from his ever evolving one-man show
A Suicide-Site Guide to the City, a theater piece that dramatizes one
of his pet concerns: the breakdown of the boundary between audience
and performer. He wasn't on a stage in the tiny bookstore, and the abbreviated
bit he delivered didn't include any direct audience participation, but
the partly improvised piece was electrifying--a far cry from your typically
sleepy reading. His 2004 novel, Your Secrets Sleep With Me,
is similarly interactive. The book's comic tale of kids on the caffeinated
lam is peppered with second-person interruptions, in which the narrator
exhorts the reader to really--I mean, come on, seriously--think about
what you're doing, to look at the person next to you, and even, at a
certain point, to "kiss yourself. . . . Just put this book down
for a moment and kiss your own hand. Why not? What have you got to lose?"
O'Donnell performs as part of the monthly "Dollar Store" series,
for which each participant must craft a piece around a particular item
from a dollar store. O'Donnell's inspiration is a plaque that says THERE'S
NEVER ENOUGH TIME UNLESS YOU'RE SERVING IT. Joining him are Elizabeth
Crane, working with a box of generic minoxidil, and Jeremy Sosenko,
riffing on a fisherman's hat emblazoned with the words FRANCE, EGYPT
and MOROCCO. Jonathan Messinger hosts, with help from local comic Sean
Gardner. --> Fri 6/3, 7 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, $1 suggested
donation, 21+. --Todd Dills
Chicago
Sun-Times, 4.24.05
Some of the best young writers in town show up
on the first Friday of each month at the Hideout, a bar at 1354 W. Wabansia,
to partake in a performance series called "The Dollar Store."
Each month at "The Dollar Store," four
or five artists -- usually including a couple of fiction writers, maybe
a poet and a comic -- present works inspired by an object picked up
in a dollar store. The founder of the performance series, Jonathan Messinger,
who is books editor for Time Out Chicago, chooses the object of inspiration.
"Next month, for May, it's lousy paperbacks,"
he says.
Newcity
Chicago, 1.11.05
The
Hideout is brimming with Chicago's literati. They're all here for "The
Dollar Store," a monthly show run by Jonathan Messinger of thisisgrand.org.
Messinger has picked up three items from Chicago's finer dollar stores,
and passed them out to three of Chicago's finer writers and performers
to serve as inspiration.
Full
Story
flavorpill,
11.16.04:
Packed with wares that
are almost too cheap and random even for eBay -- think discontinued
candy, detergent in bulk, and dinky foreign toys -- dollar stores
truly do give you a bang for your measly buck. As this relaxed night
of readings aims to prove, they also can provide a unique starting point
for storytelling. Hosted by local writer Jonathan Messinger, the event
features the common thread that each story begins with an item purchased
from a random dollar store; with that as their only constraint, the
performers were given a month to travel down whatever tangential literary
path they pleased. The results may be unpredictable, but the price is
certainly right. (PS)
Columbia Chronicle, 11.22.04
Messinger said the idea
for "The Dollar Store," which charges only a $1 donation
for admittance, came to him a couple months ago. "I just thought
it'd be fun and less stressful than some of the other literary
events around the city," he said.
The audience that packed
the backroom of the Hideout and participants like [Sean] Gardner made
it evident that "The Dollar Store" will live up to its creator's
intentions.
Full
Story
