Now in its fourth year, Jupiter Theatre’s Europa New Works Festival is set to continue to help audiences explore new theatrical works well before they hit the stage.

Each year, the festival helps to incubate new Canadian theatre productions and help give artists’ audience feedback. But for the first time, the festival is expanding to include more than just theatrical plays.

Jupiter Theatre’s Artistic Director, Andrew G. Cooper, said that this year’s festival will consist of two play readings, a screenplay presentation, and an improvised comedy show.

“I think it’s really an important part of the artistic process and of the sort of fabric of the theatre community. But I also think it’s really important to get audiences investors in work early,” Cooper said.

“For the artist, it’s really a chance to test something, to try things out, to experiment, to gain the response, and to gauge that response from the audience and for the audience members. It’s something that I think is exciting, and for more adventurous audience members who are looking for something that’s new.”

All of the productions-in-progress this year fit into Jupiter Theatre’s mission to produce sci-fi, fantasy, and gothic works that don’t usually get presented by other theatrical companies in the city.

Cooper said that holding a new-works incubator like the Europa New Works Festival—which itself was called the Europa New Works Incubator in previous years—was a way to present more exploratory or fantastic projects to Calgarians.

The name of the festival itself comes from Jupiter’s smallest Galilean moon, which is believed to hide an underwater ocean under a thick ice crust.

“What we’re we’re trying to do at this festival is to find new works that are kind of sitting beneath the depth of this icy outer crust. We’re really leaning into what’s called the Iceberg Theory. It’s this idea from Ernest Hemingway that when you take in a piece of writing, you’re just seeing like 10 per cent of the work that goes into it,” said Cooper.

“The other 90 per cent is beneath the surface, which is how icebergs are usually formed. They float most of their mass under the surface. So we’re really trying to reveal the process, and reveal a little more of that 90 per cent of the work that goes into creating new works of writing and new works of theatre.”

Europa New Works Festival A behind the scenes look at how theatre is made

Cooper said that audiences would get to see more of how theatre is made.

“It’s wonderful for people who are curious, or even just people who love the arts in general because it is a peek behind the curtain. One of the things it really reveals is how much work goes into a new work… whatever you’re seeing, the final product that has been, often, many years sometimes even as much as a decade in the making,” he said.

The festival starts with a Friday showing of the improvised comedy adventure Winging It!, which combines elements of game shows, Whose Line is it Anyway, and Dungeons and Dragons.

It’s followed by a Sunday performance of the sci-fi musical Yeoman by Miranda Martini, with songs by Martini and Will Weisenfeld, and directed by Conrad Belau.

That reading tells the story of two men who are swept up in an intergalactic war, each taking their roles as rebels against the state before being brought together again by fate—all set to the sounds of lush synth pop and the contrasting themes of justice, homophobia, and colonialism.

Sunday also is the presentation of People Who Stand With the Gods, by Madeline Hunter Smith and directed by Madeleine Taylor-Gregg.

The work-in-progress is a cyber-gothic opera, about a young woman in 1999 unlucky in love and searching the internet for others like her, opens a portal with something sinister reaching back.

The festival concludes with a second performance of Winging It!

Cooper said that for Calgarians who have never attended a works-in-progress performance, the experience is probably not unlike something they’ve seen at a comic convention or through their favourite narrative podcast.

“Really what it is just the actors reading the script, just like they would in a rehearsal. Or, if you’re on a TV show or film set, the actors get around the table, they all read the script. That’s what we’re doing here,” he said.

“It’s just a way to experience a little more of theatre of the mind. The idea of theatre of the mind comes from radio, where you hear the words and then you, as the audience member, participate by creating these landscapes or these characters or these action scenes or whatever it is in your own mind. So we’re really tapping into that.”

The Europa New Works Festival runs on Jan. 31 and Feb. 2. Tickets are available online at www.theatrejupiter.com/europanewworksfestival, or at the door at the Erratics Indie Arts Club at 625 11 Avenue SW.