Fruit Salad: a monthly queer open mic night!

Fruit Salad is Dorothy's monthly queer open mic night! Hosted by Rainn and co-produced by Whitney LaMora, this open mic night gives ten performers the chance to share their work in front of our supportive & gorgeous group of attendees before we hand it over to our feature performer of the night.

Our open mic sign up is based on a lottery system! Attendees will get a link immediately after purchasing a ticket to sign up for the open mic until Sunday March 13th. Five open mic slots are reserved for BIPOC performers and the other five slots are open for all submissions.

Our open mic list will be announced via our Instagram @fruitsaladchicago.

After our open mic for the evening, we welcome our featured for the month - Lou Burrows!!

Lou (they/them) is a queer nonbinary butch poet and aspiring homesteader whose work lives mostly on Instagram. They write about love, nature, and heartbreak, with a focus on queer kinship. Growing up poor in rural New York, Lou created their own sense of adventure using what they had, which was land to explore. And though they once found poetry inaccessible, their confidence has since been bolstered by a robust and supportive poetry community. In college, they were lucky enough to spend time sharing post-performance carrots and hummus with Andrea Gibson at their campus' designated "queer house," where they first discovered how exciting poetry can be. As the middle(ish) child of a blended family, Lou finds chaos exciting and gleans inspiration from human connection, communication, and other forms of art. Their favorite thing is when someone they love speaks a sentence that turns into the opening line of a poem. An adventurer, explorer, tinkerer, storyteller, and survivor, Lou writes poems for themselves and the people who want to enjoy them along with them. They think of their work as the daffodils of poetry: ubiquitous, but still makes you feel good. They hope to publish a volume of poetry someday, and yes, their typewriter comes on camping trips with them. Lou lives in Chicago with their girlfriend, two cats, and an eye towards moving their whole family into a farmhouse in upstate, NY. @LT_Chicken

Entry is $15 [tickets limited to 2 per purchase] and proceeds are shared with the performers, the production team, our home base Dorothy and our giveback partner for this month chosen by Lou: Soul Fire Farm!House of the Lorde!

Soul Fire Farm is an Afro-Indigenous centered community farm based in Petersburg, NY committed to uprooting racism and seeding sovereignty in the food system. They raise and distribute life-giving food as a means to end food apartheid. With deep reverence for the land and wisdom of our ancestors, they work to reclaim their collective right to belong to the earth and to have agency in the food system. They bring diverse communities together on this healing land to share skills on sustainable agriculture, natural building, spiritual activism, health, and environmental justice. They are training the next generation of activist-farmers and strengthening the movements for food sovereignty and community self-determination.

Doors for the evening open at 6:45pm and our show starts at 7:30pm. Performers should arrive by 7:15pm at the latest and check in with our host to be guaranteed their slot. Our feature follows after intermission.

Dorothy is 21+ and requires a physical ID for entry. Dorothy is also ADA accessible. Upon arrival, our security team and staff can help with any elevator access needed.

NOTE: Refund requests for Fruit Salad are given until 12pm the day of the show. Tickets sold outside of Eventbrite are not accepted for entry. No tickets, no waitlist at the door.