"I'm one of those people who just can't bear sitting in a theatre watching something I could've seen on TV," says producer Jane Corry. "With us there are lots of things going on at the same time and you're not just given that single view point by a camera - you have to choose where you're going to look."

Describing itself as Britain's longest running performance theatre company and one of the last true theatre collectives in the UK, People Show is a multimedia company of almost legendary stature whose shows have taken place everywhere from fields to telephone boxes and even on water.

In 2005 they hosted The People Show All Stars at the Spiegeltent, one of the hits of the Brighton Fringe Festival.

Bill Nighy has declared himself an obsessive fan, sweetly remarking that "one dance sequence inspired by some tramp dancing in a pub has had a formative influence on the way I have moved ever since".

2006 marked the company's 40th birthday and to celebrate they created and performed their 117th production, 117: The Birthday Show, at their studios in Bethnal Green.

"We used the whole of the building, from the garden and gantries to the corridors and car park," says Corry. "People moved from space to space with the bar running throughout. Every night it would turn into a party with a band playing free jazz and people projecting on to washing on a washing line.

"People would just stumble across these weird and wonderful things. We'd pulled together a company from across the generations and it was a really exciting piece. We sold out every single night."

The piece was such a success that People Show decided to take a scaleddown version on tour: cue 118, The Birthday Tour, a piece of promenade theatre including live music and video art which will take place in the Gardner auditorium, in the student nightclub and on the company's own converted tour bus.

"We got a 55-seater coach and turned it into a performance space and a tour bus," she explains. "We removed the seats and covered it in gold-and-silver slash and black-and-white zebra skin to make it look like a seedy club. Our ride is so pimped - all it needs is poles."

Recounted in short sections whose atmospheres range "from brash to ethereal", the story involves a melancholy clown, a couple haunted by ghosts and a climactic ruckus in which all the characters go at each other with fists, chairs and fencing foils.

"People Show has always been about exploring the boundary between performance art and theatre in a way that's intriguing without being up its own backside," concludes Corry.

"Somehow entertaining' has become a dirty word as far as contemporary theatre practice in the UK is concerned but there's no reason why there should be a pay-off. There's no reason why you can't experiment with form and boundaries and still have fun. It's really important to People Show not to take itself too seriously."

  • Starts 8pm, tickets £14/£12. Call 01273 685681