ST PETERSBURG AIRPORT. Three-thirty in the morning. Sleepy travellers shuffle past brooding Russian customs men. Among the travellers is a strange group of outlandishly dressed men and woman, carrying black executive cases. Suspicions are immediately aroused.

"Where's the gun?" asks a customs officer: "Here," they say, pulling it out of a case.

The customs man triumphantly folds his arms: criminals! Half an hour of explanations and persuasion. "Well, OK, on your way, but next time..." They shuffle on to check in. "No, you can't board the aircraft". Why? Too much luggage. They had brought with them folding ladders and aluminium trunks. Nine weird people crowd around the official and start explaining that they flew in with this baggage and they have all the papers saying that they can fly out with it.

Who? Ana Monro, the lady to whom eighteen years ago a theatre was dedicated. This is the story: in 1978 a group was set up with the name Pocestno gledališče Predrazpadom (`pre-collapse street theatre'), which was intended for theatre processions through Ljubljana. But the bureaucrats were not sympathetic to the idea, and the theatre itself fell apart. The group comprised two members: poet, actor and literateur Andrej Rozman - Roza, and sculptor Marko Kovačič.

Soon enough, however, the pair received an invitation to spend the pre-New Year period on tour as a fringe performance package together with the punk bands d'Pravda and Orkester Titanik. The pair had three songs and the story of a knight who leaves his sweet-heart. The story evolved from performance to performance, and in time a third performer was added This in turn resulted in an independent show, the now legendary 1492 or Can a pre-war striptease stall show us anything today. The rest is history.

In the early years Ana Monro Theatre was labelled alternative. They were even called the first punk theatre group. Mojca Dimec, for many years the only female member, wrote in a book about them that there was in fact "the last deliberately alternative theatre". Of course the question is how we define alternative If by this we mean simply non-institutional, then Ana Monro is alternative only in a certain sense, for over the years, given its unique status within the Slovenian theatre scene, it has itself become an institution.

The specific nature of their expression could most easily be termed 'Monroism'. In the manifesto written in 1983 by Andrej Rozman Roza, the spiritus movens of the group, they link themselves to the traditions of Commedia dell'arte, Chinese opera; American burlesque, the Russian avant garde, the circus, processions and more. They are distinguished by their perseverance in non essential diversions, the process of association, improvisation, gags, their interpretation of genres and in a sense of humour, all of which has no intention of changing the world, but would rather simply up-end the established ways in which people behave.

They are more interested in the comic than the philosophically irrefutable. Occasionally their stories are hard to fathom, but they are in no way unimportant. Yet their audiences clearly love them. For many years they had a permanent circle of followers, who were aware that they had to catch every single performance, since no one show was the same. It is true, indeed, that they don't like repetition; they achieved a record of their own with over a hundred of their Variete (variety and impro) shows and with sixty performances of San Remo. This is another trade mark of Monroism.

For this reason they decided that the Variete shows, which were a cabaret mixture of Roza's songs and impro games - and in spite of their enormous appeal with the public - would thereafter be consigned to history. Over and out! Yet they can rightly claim the lion's share of merit for developing theatre improvisation into Slovenia's own national Impro League (Improliga), in which various theatre and performance groups compete each year, and this league has even been extended to a schools league (ŠILA). So now try and say that they haven't made a major contribution to Slovenian theatre! After twice winning the title of national impro champions, they withdrew from the league and hit the road again.

"Street theatre is flesh and blood theatre," stresses group member Goro Osojnik. "It all happens in a moment, and after the show everything goes back to how it was". In other words, these people are the ultimate carnival performers. Street theatre incorporates a variety of genres, and the Ana Monro shows cover all bases in this respect. Zrcalni svet (Mirror World) was a basic form of street theatre, a procession; Kuga (Plague) mixed provocation with cabaret - although they insist that provocation is not in their nature.

This year's show is Piknik (Picnic). In addition to these shows they have staged a whole range of different one-off performance events: Pekovska sodba (Trial of the Baker), featuring the dunking of a cheating baker in the Ljubljanica river, which in fact has now become almost a tradition, so meaning that they will no longer be performing it; in Bled they performed a series of four short shows entitled Rikli in njegov čas (The Life and Times of Rikli), which involved transporting the audience by cable lift up a hill, where they collected dew and yarrow; and last year in Ljubljana's Prešeren Square they staged Prešeren's Krst pri Savici (Baptism under the Savica), which was far from being a turgid incantation.

Ana Monro Theatre is also the organiser of street theatre festivals Ana Desetnica in Ljubljana and Maribor. This year they will be appearing at one of the biggest street festivals in Spain.On the street there is always a communication with the public, and without this Ana Monro Theatre would probably not exist.

The most bizarre episode from the public: someone got up on stage and did everything he was told. Without communication or interaction. It seemed that he had some disorder, for he was entirely without his own will. Since they didn't know what to do with him, they put him to one side of the stage and told him to be a palm tree. So he was a palm tree. Right to the end of the show.

The third issue in alternative arts is commercialism. The situation is this: to a large extent the members of Ana Monro Theatre live from their stage activities, although this does not mean that they live exclusively from this. They are generally at a time in their lives when they prefer to be paid for their work. They see commercialism in simple terms: "It isn't ethics that's important, but poetics".

The weirdos at St Petersburg airport were: Andrej Rozman-Roza, Goro Osojnik, Žiga Saksida, Borut Cajnko, Primož Ekart, Breda Krumpak, Janez Habič - Johnny, Matjaž Ocvirk and Drago Milinovič. The members of Ana Monro Theatre. Mrs Ana is an imaginary lady. The gun was a theatre prop.