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Europa New Works Incubator
Jupiter Theatre is committed to the development of new Canadian Theatre and engages with theatre creators each season through its Europa New Works Incubator. This program presents in-house workshops and presentations of plays-in-progress by local playwrights and theatre artists.
For Jupiter Theatre's inaugural Europa New Works Incubator (formally the New Play Development Series) we are workshopping and developing three works by local playwrights over the season. The culmination of this work was presented on September 9 and 10, 2021 at the Central Calgary Library.
By Madeline Hunter Smith
After being abandoned by their mother in the local aquarium at the beginning of a major “super-flood” event, Dropsy and Fin have forged a new way of life for themselves within the underground walls of “Quarium”. As Dropsy breaches the cusp of puberty, a strange and terrible monster arrives that both girls are convinced has come for them from the flooded wasteland above—the Mire. Could it be a beast from the water? A figment of their imagination? Or something else entirely? Certain that the monster is drawing ever nearer, the girls are forced at odds with one another, and their carefully-crafted ecosystem begins to crumble as devastating new secrets come to light.
The Mire focuses on themes of environmental and familial responsibility, sororal love and loyalty, and the fire of human perseverance in the face of personal and global suffering. It explores the darknesses of growing up without guidance, and asks the question, “What fear is greater—that of which we do not know, or that of which we do?”
Content disclaimer: references to violence, blood, animal death, child neglect, and suggestive themes.
About the Team
Madeline Hunter Smith - Playwright
Madeline Hunter Smith is a performer, clown, and award-winning playwright based in Mohkínstsis/Calgary, Alberta. Select acting credits include Tina in My Testimonial (Independent), Jordan in Waiting for Daisy (Lunchbox Theatre), The Duchess in The Duchess of Malfi (University of Lethbridge), Rhea in Glorious Clockwork (TheatreXtra), Nell in The Way We Burn (Reckless Daughter Collective) and Death in FOUR (Jupiter Theatre). Madeline is also a two-time recipient of the Play Right Prize for her plays Carnaticum (2018) and Silica (2019), and has worked with Alberta Playwright’s Network through their Emerging Playwright Mentorship Program. She has recently plunged headfirst into digital theatre during the pandemic with companies including Verb Theatre and Theatre BSMT, writing, workshopping, and producing original works such as i, gatekeeper and HELLO KATE. She is a founding core creator of a new cross-disciplinary art group, Sucker for Punishment, and an artistic associate at Reckless Daughter Collective. Madeline currently uses her personal artistic practice to explore the fundamental experiences of female-identifying people through writing and devising high-fantasy horror for the stage and other media (and, of course, playing D&D in her spare time).
Madeleine Taylor-Gregg - Dramaturg, Director
Madeleine Taylor-Gregg is a queer, Calgary-based actor, playwright, director, creator, and dramaturg. Her artistic practice focuses on new work, devised content, horror, and both queer and women's stories. Select credits include playing Maren in "Ella the Elk" (Blue Jeans), Zoe in "Bright Lights" (Theatre BSMT), and Margaret in "The Drowning Girls" (ULeth), directing "Helen" (IGNITE!) and "Where's My Sky?" (Hoodlum/TheatreXtra) and playwriting credits include "ZOO" (Common Ground IV) and "The Way We Burn" (Postponed Common Ground V). Madeleine is an artistic associate for Theatre BSMT as well as the creative director for Reckless Daughter Creative.
By Gordon Pengilly
Michael’s world collapsed seven years ago with his little girl’s sudden disappearance. His most recent efforts to find her prove strangely fruitful, resulting not only in the discovery of a homeless teenage—who bears a striking resemblance to his daughter and with no memory of her past—but also a glimpse into the enigma of time itself. Michael must also contend with the teen’s guardians: a pair of thieves with agendas of their own; and his own estranged wife who has been working out her own pain in a parallel world of sublimation and therapy.
Flesh & Ghost hopes to pick up on our own perceptions of an inexact life, the idea that our existence is other than linear, that we might loop back to critical moments which hold other possibilities that play out in our minds to obsession. Flesh & Ghost explores the notion that the line between deep remorse and madness can be very thin indeed.
Content disclaimer: references to violence and drug use.
About the Team
Gordon Pengilly - Playwright
Gordon Pengilly has written more than fifty plays for TV, film, radio and the stage. His work including Seeds, Swipe, Metastasis, Yours ‘til The Moon Falls Down, Tom Three Persons, Tom Form And The Speed Of Love, Contraption and They Don’t Call Them Farmers Anymore has been produced across Canada and abroad. His screenplay Drumheller Or Dangerous Times won the 2003 Writer’s Guild of Canada Jim Burt Prize and was workshopped at the Praxis Centre for Screenwriting. His play The Work Play which premiered in New York at the Actor’s Loft in 2000, then in Japan in 2002, was made into a short film in Los Angeles and shown at Fourth Wall Screenings 2005. Hardhats And Stolen Hearts co‐created with Theatre Network was one of the first Canadian plays to be performed Off‐Broadway at the Performing Garage in 1978. Gordon has been resident playwright or dramaturg for theatres and institutions in Edmonton, Calgary, Banff, Red Deer, Toronto, Victoria, New Brunswick, Dublin and Texas, and he routinely runs workshops for Alberta Playwrights Network. His first collection of plays Metastasis And Other Plays published by NeWest Press received the 2009 W.O. Mitchell Book Prize.
Constantine X. Anastasakis - Dramaturg, Director
Constantine X. Anastasakis is a Calgary-based director, playwright, and actor, holding a BA in English with a concentration in Creative Writing (‘14) and an MFA in Directing (‘19) from the University of Calgary. With directing and playwriting styles influenced by German regietheatre, the 90’s British In-yer-face theatre, and works categorized broadly as ‘absurdist’, CXA is drawn to meta-, transgressive, and speculative theatre that offers a contemporary social commentary, disrupts and reimagines the classical canon, and/or experiments with multimedia and interdisciplinary approaches to theatre making. CXA is an artistic associate with Jupiter Theatre and is the director of their Europa New Works Incubator. CXA is currently writing a tryptic of science fiction plays that engage with the topics of cloning, AI, and the future of civil liberties.