They perform in nightclubs and at music festivals, with shows that feature inflatable babies and drag artists. thisispopbaby are redefining theatre for people left cold by traditional drama – and proving you don't have to be gay to be queer. PETER CRAWLEYmeets the movers behind the company

IT IS A beautiful summer’s day in Dublin and high above the traffic and heat shimmer on Cornmarket, in an airy loft on Augustine Street, two people sit trying to come up with a definition for one over-heated word: “Queer”.

Jenny Jennings, producer of the performance company thisispopbaby, quotes the young theatre director Una McKevitt. “She put it quite succinctly when she said: ‘Gay is a sexuality and Queer is a sensibility.’”

Phillip McMahon, the company's director and resident writer, prefers the take of Jesse Cullum, stage manager of his play, All About Town. "Gay is the present and Queer is the future."

Ahead of Queer Notions, the first curated festival of gay culture within the Dublin Pride festival, both interpretations are notionally Queer, going way beyond sexual orientation. (McMahon is gay, Jennings is straight, but both consider themselves Queer.) For one of the hippest theatre companies in existence, it’s not important to come up with a right answer. They’re really just throwing another party.

Thisispopbaby can either sound awkward in conversation or serve as an excellent icebreaker. ("Do you know about thisispopbaby?" "Not yet, darling.") When asked about its origin, McMahon thinks for a moment and replies: "It was my first email address." Jennings, who warmed to McMahon when she saw his first play, Danny and Chantelle (Still Here)performed at Dublin's Pod nightclub in 2006, pressed him for a more fluid rationale. He thinks again. "This is popular culture," he explains and trails it with a considered afterthought, "Baby."

That succinct explanation tells you everything you need to know about a company that is redefining theatre for anyone who has ever felt frozen out by the chandelier-heavy foyers of traditional venues, or uninterested in any experience that requires three acts and an interval.

Danny and Chantelle (Still Here)was an engagingly crafted monologue-driven story about friendship, club-culture, drugs and sexuality, performed, crucially, in a nightclub. Last year, they inaugurated a performance tent at the Electric Picnic festival, where an inflatable giant baby grinned down from the big top while the legendary drag queen Miss Panti hosted a scabrous talkshow. Although the attendance was huge, nobody thought twice about shutting everything down for an hour so that they could rush off to watch Grace Jones.

The company may give off a freewheeling agenda. At one point McMahon ventures that they might not produce plays for two years and simply find basements to throw parties in, but that belies a much more sophisticated and intelligent operation. Put Queer Notions into a YouTube search, and you'll see just how canny and hilarious their marketing can be. Look at the festival's line-up, one that includes avant-garde performance terrorist David Hoyle (previously The Divine David), neo-cabaret act Bourgeois Maurice and a screening of the documentary Before Stonewall, and you'll see an unusual balance between politics, perversion and pleasure. And look at the associations they've forged – a co-production with the Abbey, a tent at Electric Picnic and now a curated festival with Calipo Theatre Company within the Dublin LGBTQ Pride Festival – and you'll wonder how a company that is barely two years old can accomplish so much.

“We very much come from a dancing and clubbing background,” says McMahon when asked about the company’s aesthetic. “And that’s carried through to all the things we do.”

McMahon had been regarded solely as a professional actor until his self-authored showcase, Danny and Chantelle, blew up into a phenomenon at the Dublin Fringe Festival. His next show, a rite-of-passage cum gay-travelogue called All Over Town, was a slicker but less probing affair in 2007, here reissued for the festival with a new cast, director and an altered script.

Then last year, he wrote the brilliant short piece Investment Potential, about waning love and spiralling mortgages, for the Abbey, and cemented his reputation as a writer to be reckoned with. The Abbey made him its Writer in Association for 2009, which is either a heartening example of recognition and support for young emerging talent, or another example of an alternative voice being set to work for The Man.

McMahon is having none of it. “The Man is working for me!” he laughs. “thisispopbaby is the national theatre of Ireland! That’s a slight overstatement, but thisispopbaby could easily be an alternative national theatre for an otherwise uninterested citizenry.”

“I’ve always wanted to be involved in theatre that my friends can come and see,” says Jennings. “These people are hugely culturally engaged. They’ve got enormous record collections. They’re crazy about art house film. But theatre just doesn’t do it for them. This is definitely a way to get you in and to get you hooked: to tell exciting stories about a new generation’s life.”

Just like the viral marketing campaigns threaded breezily and wittily through social networks and YouTube, thisispopbaby’s wildly diverse efforts all feed into each other. “You think, if they’re keyed in to showing me a good time here,” says McMahon of their inflatable-baby tent at Electric Picnic, “maybe they’re keyed into showing me a good time there.”

McMahon despairs of the sanitisation of Dublin’s gay scene. “Where’s the Queer vibe? Even when gay marriage was being floated, people were really wet about it. They didnt want to go and march until key people, like Panti, got involved.”

There are serious consequences for broad culture if the gay scene becomes complacent. Some of the most innovative movements in art have stemmed from the gay alternative (for more on this, see the entire history of pop music), and no good will come of inertia.

McMahon, who tries to gauge gay culture from the candidates at any given Alternative Miss Ireland competition, wants to see an alternative to gay culture of cravats and green carnations. “We’re like: ‘Where’s your fake tits and big hair?” Now that sounds like pop to me. Baby.

Queer Notions runs from June 22nd to 27th at Project Arts Centre. Details on www.thisispopbaby.com and www.projectartscentre.ie