Culture Flash!

• For FronteraFest, playwrights Greg Romero and Marc Frost had to tailor their scripts "Radio Ghosts" and "A Modern Day Duel," respectively, to Hyde Park Theatre's small stage and the Short Fringe's 25-minute time limit. But that was nothing compared to what they had to do for Specific Gravity Ensemble's current environmental theatre project: Their plays had to be under two minutes and fit in an elevator. The Louisville, Ky., company – headed by Artistic Director Rand Harmon, a UT grad – solicited plays that could be performed while riding to the 15th floor of Louisville's historic Starks Building, and Romero's "New Orleans: December 26, 2005" and Frost's "Hands" were among the 24 that made the cut. Response to Elevator Plays' first two weeks was so strong that the run has been extended through Feb. 24. For more information, visit www.specificgravityensemble.com.

• Kelley Caleb Hunt won a national storytelling contest sponsored by MySpace, TNT cable network, and the Moth, a New York-based nonprofit dedicated to the art of storytelling. Hunt's comical yarn about responding to an online job posting for an "international vegetable courier" was judged best-in-show by a panel that included Six Feet Under's Lauren Ambrose and humorist Andy Borowitz of the Borowitz Report. (Hear the story yourself at www.myspace.com/mothstories.) Hunt was flown to New York Jan. 23 to experience a live Moth event and in August will compete against other contest winners from both coasts in the StorySLAM for the national crown. Closer to home, he just completed a run of Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit with the Way off Broadway Community Players. Be on the lookout for the Moth's national tour in Austin at the Alamo Drafthouse Downtown on May 3. For more information, visit www.themoth.com.

• Regine Basha, co-founder and associate of Fluent~Collaborative and Arthouse adjunct curator for the last three years, is one of the six jurors who gets to choose the winner of the $50,000 Hunting Art Prize this year. The award by petroleum corporation Hunting PLC will go to a Texas-based artist who is 18 years or older. The winner will be announced on April 28. For more information, visit www.huntingartprize.com.

• Ted Ollier, a co-founder of the visual-arts collective Ars Ipsa, has received the Revere Graphics Materials Award for his Graphic Panama Canal, an embossed-relief print using a hand-cut, shaped copper plate. The work in included in the Boston Printmakers' 2007 North American Print Biennial, opening this Sunday, Feb. 18, and running through April 1 in the 808 Gallery at Boston University.

• "The Downtown Show: The New York Scene, 1974-1984," which just concluded its run at the Austin Museum of Art, has been voted Best Thematic Museum in New York City by the International Association of Art Critics/USA. The exhibition, which was organized by Grey Art Gallery and Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University, will receive the honor during a ceremony on Feb. 21 at El Museo del Barrio in New York.