Culture Flash

• Playwright John Fleming is getting a New York production for his drama, The Two Lives of Napoleon Beazley. Fleming's play, based on the true story of an African-American honor-roll student who murdered the father of a prominent federal judge, received its world premiere in Austin (see cover story "A Double Life," July 15, 2005). Now, Incumbo Theater Company, a 3-year-old theatre company with a strong leaning toward social drama, is mounting the play for a Feb. 21-March 16 run at the Clemente Soto Velez Center, 107 Suffolk, on Manhattan's Lower East Side. Fleming, who chairs the Department of Theatre and Dance at Texas State University-San Marcos, will be present for a talk-back at the performance March 8, which will benefit Big Brothers Big Sisters. For more information, visit www.incumbo.org.

• Playwright Jennifer Haley, formerly of Austin, will have her play Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom produced at the 2008 Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville. Local theatregoers may remember Haley's Sabbath Days in a Hot Pickup (Chicago House), The Butcher's Daughter (Refraction Arts), and Edmundo (A Musical Dalliance) (Refraction Arts). The new play, which she developed last year while studying with Paula Vogel at Brown University, concerns a group of suburban teens addicted to an online horror video game in which suburban teens fight zombies in a setting that mirrors their own neighborhood. The Humana production will have a local connection: Austin's own Michael Raiford is designing the set. Haley, who just received a 2008 McDowell Colony Fellowship, currently lives in Los Angeles. For more information, visit www.jenniferhaley.com.

• Designer Chia Guillory is one of a handful of artists in the "new wave craft movement" selected to present her wares in this year's American Craft Show, the largest juried indoor craft show in the nation. This is the first year that the American Craft Council has opted to include New Wave Craft as a category for exhibition at the show, which typically includes works by more than 700 leading craft artists. Three hundred artists were invited to apply in the new category, but a jury process whittled the number down to just 15 who will show, and one of them is the Austinite known for her handmade hats and bags (www.chiahats.com). The show takes place in Baltimore Feb. 22-24. For more information, visit www.craftcouncil.org.