Lunchbox Theatre, a company known for its growing emphasis on laughter in the past few seasons, is taking itself more seriously when it comes to its true mandate — new one-act play development. Accordingly, Lunchbox’s Suncor Energy Stage One Festival of New Work is longer than ever — five weeks.

The 22nd annual festival runs on Fridays and Saturdays, until July 3. Under the new expanded program, 10 plays will be workshopped and then given one reading each.

“There’s nothing being workshopped that I don’t think may potentially end up in our season (of seven plays) in the future,” says Lunchbox artistic director Pamela Halstead.

Two of the Suncor festival plays, In Flanders Fields (a newly expanded musical) and Shopaholic Husband Hunt, are already slotted for the 2010-11 Lunchbox season.

Coming up for public readings this weekend are Halifax playwright Joanne Miller’s Cradle and All (Friday at 6:10 p.m.) and The Whimsy State or The Principality of Outer Baldonia (Saturday at 12:10 p.m.) by Calgary writer A.J. Demers.

The former is a comedy about an artist-mother grappling with her sense of loss of self in having had two children, compounded with the antics of an overbearing mother trying, first, to get her gay son hooked up with an eligible young woman, and second, to get her daughter’s younger child baptized (the kid’s dad is Jewish).

The Whimsy State is based on the true story of the rise and fall of the Nova Scotia micronation (Outer Baldonia) whose founder, in 1948, declared war on Russia — “which is how it all came crashing down,” Halstead says.

“It’s hysterical.”

Admission is free for all Suncor shows, but you can reserve by calling 403-265-4292.