Update: This event has been postponed.
A notice from Welcome to Night Vale: 

Welcome to Night Vale, where all conspiracy theories are true and everything is absurd. Producers of the popular podcast Welcome to Night Vale bring the strange happenings of a small town to Memphis on their “Haunting of Night Vale” tour.

In “The Haunting of Night Vale,” host Cecil Palmer and his partner Carlos build a new house, but it appears that their brand new abode is haunted. In a town that has floating cats with tentacles and where presidential races are settled by knockouts in boxing rings, it’s unclear what could happen.

Nina Subin

Jeffrey Cranor

What we do know is that Jeffrey Cranor and co-writer Joseph Fink developed the plot around a home improvement show placed in a typical haunted house setting.”We were playing with the idea of Cecil and Carlos building a brand-new house together,” says Cranor. “And we just started with the basic idea of, could a new house be haunted already? And we regularly like making jokes about what reality TV home improvement shows are like, so it was just sort of fun to play around with placing the Property Brothers in Night Vale.”

Asked how they come up with ideas for the show, Cranor says, “I think it’s just years of reading and watching strange fiction and liking science fiction and horror and enjoying funny and interesting stories and stuff that is fascinating in that way. Like if you are a professional chef, you can create new flavor combinations that aren’t common. They’re probably based off of something you’ve had before, even if they’re not exactly what you ate before. But over time, you’ve kind of learned what tastes good, and you use your taste buds to play with concepts and hope people like it as much as you do.”

The Haunting of Night Vale, Duncan-Williams Performance Hall at GPAC, 1801 Exeter, Wednesday, March 18th, 7:30-9:30 p.m., $25.

Update: This event has been postponed. Check back later for the reschedule date.

After three months of painting and installation, local artist Lawrence Matthews III is ready to reveal his new mural at Orange Mound Community Center’s dedication celebration this Saturday.

Through UrbanArt Commission’s District Mural Program, and with the help of assistants Amber George and Toonky Berry and photographer Andrea Morales, Matthews presents his first permanent large-scale public art piece — one that represents members of the Orange Mound community depicted as the epitome of role models and icons.

Lawrence Matthews III

Orange Mound Community Center mural

“A lot of times, it’s like, let’s put the most famous person or a celebrity on this wall,” says Matthews. “I didn’t want to do that. What I wanted to do was give a platform and give space to people who are just regular working people to see themselves exalted and treated as icons.”

Lawrence says that many people in the black communities don’t have the opportunity to see themselves represented this way often enough.

“And that has residual effects across generations,” he says. “So maybe seeing a firefighter that is 20 feet tall or to see a nurse, a teacher, or somebody graduating high school in the background, this place that you inhabit so much. I thought that was more powerful.”

Much of Lawrence’s work outside of this mural deals with the issues surrounding displacement of Africans living in America, civil rights, and the gentrification of black communities.

“As an artist, I think there is a social responsibility that is a part of making art,” he says. “It’s making things beautiful, too, but also telling stories and navigating different things.”

Orange Mound Community Center Dedication Celebration, Orange Mound Community Center, 2572 Park, Saturday, March 14th, 1 p.m., free.