To place an obituary, please include the information from the obituary checklist below in an email to obits@pioneerpress.com. There is no option to place them through our website. Feel free to contact our obituary desk at 651-228-5263 with any questions.
General Information:
Your full name,
Address (City, State, Zip Code),
Phone number,
And an alternate phone number (if any)
Obituary Specification:
Name of Deceased,
Obituary Text,
A photo in a JPEG or PDF file is preferable, TIF and other files are accepted, we will contact you if there are any issues with the photo.
Ad Run dates
There is a discount for running more than one day, but this must be scheduled on the first run date to apply.
If a photo is used, it must be used for both days for the discount to apply, contact us for more information.
Policies:
Verification of Death:
In order to publish obituaries a name and phone number of funeral home/cremation society is required. We must contact the funeral home/cremation society handling the arrangements during their business hours to verify the death. If the body of the deceased has been donated to the University of Minnesota Anatomy Bequest Program, or a similar program, their phone number is required for verification.
Please allow enough time to contact them especially during their limited weekend hours.
A death certificate is also acceptable for this purpose but only one of these two options are necessary.
Guestbook and Outside Websites:
We are not allowed to reference other media sources with a guestbook or an obituary placed elsewhere when placing an obituary in print and online. We may place a website for a funeral home or a family email for contact instead; contact us with any questions regarding this matter.
Obituary Process:
Once your submission is completed, we will fax or email a proof for review prior to publication in the newspaper. This proof includes price and days the notice is scheduled to appear.
Please review the proof carefully. We must be notified of errors or changes before the notice appears in the Pioneer Press based on each day’s deadlines.
After publication, we will not be responsible for errors that may occur after final proofing.
Online:
Changes to an online obituary can be handled through the obituary desk. Call us with further questions.
Payment Procedure:
Pre-payment is required for all obituary notices prior to publication by the deadline specified below in our deadline schedule. Please call 651-228-5263 with your payment information after you have received the proof and approved its contents.
Credit Card: Payment accepted by phone only due to PCI (Payment Card Industry) regulations
EFT: Check by phone. Please provide your routing number and account number.
Cash: Accepted at our FRONT COUNTER Monday – Friday from 8:00AM – 3:30PM
Rates:
The minimum charge is $162 for the first 10 lines.
Every line after the first 10 is $12.20.
If the ad is under 10 lines it will be charged the minimum rate of $162.
On a second run date, the lines are $8.20 per line, starting w/ the first line.
For example: if first run date was 20 lines the cost would be $164.
Each photo published is $125 per day.
For example: 2 photos in the paper on 2 days would be 4 photo charges at $500.
Deadlines:
Please follow deadline times to ensure your obituary is published on the day requested.
Hours
Deadline (no exceptions)
Ad
Photos
MEMORIAM (NON-OBITUARY) REQUEST
Unlike an obituary, Memoriam submissions are remembrances of a loved one who has passed. The rates for a memoriam differ from obituaries.
Please call or email us for more memoriam information
Please call 651-228-5280 for more information.
HOURS: Monday – Friday 8:00AM – 5:00PM (CLOSED WEEKENDS and HOLIDAYS)
Please submit your memoriam ad to memoriams@pioneerpress.com or call 651-228-5280.
For 47 years, St. Paul’s History Theatre has been bringing stories from the past – particularly Minnesota’s past – to engaging life on its stage, not least by being a marvelous incubator for writing talent.
It has produced 147 new plays, and that requires a lot of reading, revising, workshopping and polishing before a script is ready to receive a full-scale production. I always imagined that longtime artistic director Ron Peluso, who retired in 2022, had to be a tough taskmaster to make sure these new shows were stage-ready.
Which leads me to wonder what went wrong in the creation of “Don’t Miss Doris Hines,” the company’s very disappointing season-opening production. I won’t do the forensics on how this clearly unfinished script found its way to the company’s stage, but the upshot is that – somewhere along the line – someone had to question whether there was really a story to tell here, and, if so, how to tell it effectively.
My understanding is that playwright Tylie Shider originally set out to write a play about Sounds of Blackness, the three-time-Grammy-winning vocal group founded at Macalester College in 1969. Longtime leader Gary Hines evidently cited the influence of his mother, Minneapolis-based jazz singer Doris Hines, and Shider decided to write a play about her instead.
If Doris Hines led an interesting life, you wouldn’t know it from History Theatre’s production. We’re presented with a woman with a growing family whose singing aspirations are repeatedly criticized by her non-supportive husband. Over time, the persistent auditioner eventually lands steady work, first in her hometown of New York City, then after moving to Minneapolis, where she’s forced to deal with housing discrimination.
And, to hear Shider’s script tell it, that’s about it. There’s no particular arc to “Don’t Miss Doris Hines,” just a series of events that follow a fairly well-worn path for nightclub singers, the momentum of their careers surging and ebbing as regular work comes and goes.
It would likely have been more enjoyable if this play about a musician had more music in it. Despite the presence of an onstage pianist, most of what we hear is recorded and the actor portraying Hines, Comfort Dolo, is rarely allowed more than one verse of a song before we’re plunged back into another kitchen table argument with her husband.
The paucity of song is but one example of solid talent short-circuited by an ill-structured script. Darius Dotch has been invariably impressive on area stages over the past several years, but he’s handicapped by Shider making Hines’ husband a one-note nag. Similarly, the very talented Neal Beckman does about all he can with Hines’ agent, who merely performs an agent’s duties, i.e. booking work for his client.
Really, there’s only one character onstage who commands an audience’s attention, and that’s Hines’ gum-smacking sister-in-law, who turns from antagonist to supporter. Shider clearly wrote her to bring some comic spark to the show, but Ashawnti Sakina Ford delivers her lines in such a rapid, shrill monotone that I only caught about a third of what she said.
During the curtain call, we finally get to see and hear the real Doris Hines in vintage video projected behind the bowing actors, making immediately clear what a charismatic performer she was. Call that one more crucial element missing from “Don’t Miss Doris Hines.”
‘Don’t Miss Doris Hines’
When: Through Oct. 12
Where: History Theatre, 30 E. 10th St., St. Paul
Tickets: $70-$15, available at 651-292-4323 or historytheatre.com.
Capsule: Eminently missable.