A flea circus will be flown in specially from America when Little John Nee performs a sneak preview of the third part of his Donegal Trilogy on the tracks of the old Lough Swilly railway at Caiseal na gCorr in Co Donegal: "You couldn't really expect the midges to do any acting," he smiles wickedly.

Nee could hardly have chosen a more appropriate setting to stage his show. After all it was from this very station that successive generations of Donegal people boarded the train to embark upon a life of exile in Scotland - a theme that is central to the trilogy.

The Ballad of Jah Kettle is a modern fable about an ageing punk named Boyle (hence Kettle!) who returns home to Donegal after years of gallivanting around the world. He carries with him the ashes of his best friend and a host of unresolved demons: "It's kind of a spaghetti western or a Donegal punk western if you like," Nee promises.

Born in Glasgow in 1959 of Donegal parents, Little John Nee is the product of a culturally-hybrid society: "In Glasgow, when you'd be talking about home you'd always be talking about Donegal. I can remember the roll call at school and at least 50 per cent of it was made up of Donegal names. Everybody in the class went back to Donegal for the summer holidays. Around Gortahork or Gweedore, a Glasgow accent would be common whereas a Dublin accent would be rare."

In The Donegal Trilogy, Little John Nee gently teases apart the complexities of this fractured identity. The first part, The Derry Boat, already has quite a reputation after a highly successful run in Washington. It's framed around four generations of migration between Ireland and Scotland and is a heady mix of social parable and "Johnny Rotten Goes Tattie Hoking". The show takes its name from the legendary cattle boat that sailed between Derry and The Broomie Law in Glasgow until relatively recently. On arrival in Glasgow, Donegal folk settled mostly in the Gorbals, where Irish was as likely to be heard in the streets as English.

The Derry Boat is set in modern times but the narrative flits back and forth in time, switching focus and shifting tone. It documents the tragedy of the Great War, "when young men died for the freedom of a small country that had vast colonies in Africa" and explores the Glaswegian tradition of social agitation; a tradition that was brought back to Donegal by the likes of writers Peadar O'Donnell and Patrick McGill. Indeed it is obvious that Little John shares a dramatic milieu with McGill: "The minute I read the Children of the Dead End, I thought that this was the story of my people. I was really inspired by his fantastic descriptions of physical labour."

First performed in the Earagail Arts Festival in Donegal two years ago, The Derry Boat is a work in constant flux: "It's amazing the amount of older people in their eighties and nineties who come to see the show. And they come up to you afterwards and tell their stories. It's like validating their experiences. For all the information technology, this particular information is dying with these people. It's been a real gift to me. The story of The Derry Boat is a big, big story and it was there before me. It's my privilege to be able to work with this material."

Little John Nee's life has taken a chaotic trajectory. His family moved back to Donegal when he was 12 years old and he spent his teenage years doing the circuit of dance halls, playing mostly Pink Floyd and David Bowie covers. His band, Hemlock, reached its artistic apogee when it won the Slogadh competition in 1976. A year later, Little John went to London to become "a famous punk" but ended up working on the building sites. Being a plasterer's labourer meant that he was good at carrying steel drums and it followed logically that he would end up as a roadie with a white Rasta band. This, inevitably, led to the Hari Krishnas, whom he joined for six months until he got fed up and returned to Dublin: "It was a really good time to be in London in terms of personal development. Sometimes you hear people talking about punk now and how it was a fashion thing with the mohawks and all that. But it was a way of thinking as well and it introduced me to anarchic notions and an individual path."

Performance poets like Linton Kwesi Johnson and John Cooper Clarke were all the rage at the time and Little John was inspired to write and perform poetry of his own. Then he suffered from the occupational hazard that all buskers dread - he went hoarse. This led him to explore mime and movement and his Charlie Chaplin impersonation became a regular feature on the newly pedestrianised Grafton Street. But he soon got itchy feet.

"I went through a really rebellious stage where I wanted to get back into a seanchai style of travelling around to get away from the institutionalisation of theatre and the bureaucracy that was attached to it. So I travelled around Ireland doing shows in all kinds of small towns.`

Winters on the road were harsh, though, and in 1986 he decided to cast anchor in Galway, where he has remained ever since.

His street performances have become legendary in the city for their spontaneous gags

and dead-pan one-liners. In these days when Irish comedy has become an industry, it's refreshing to see how one man can still enthrall the masses, armed only with a blackboard, a funny hat and a hangdog look. Dressed like a cross between a Florida timeshare salesman and a circus ringmaster, he has become the quintessence of a Galway street character.

"Busking gives a great independence. It means that I don't need a theatre. I don't need anyone to give me a gig. It's just yourself and the audience. No arrangements need to be made. You go out on the street and you do your show and it's great fun. On a good day in the street you're like a ringmaster, because the street is like a circus in itself. There's so many things happening and there's things you can't control. Everything can go wrong so easily."

Yet, despite his immense popularity on the streets, it could be argued that the Galway Arts Festival is only waking up to his talent on the back of The Derry Boat's huge success in Washington, a fact that Little John takes stoically on the chin.

"The Galway Arts Festival is always changing and I've had a good relationship with them in the past. I'm changing as well. I'm very much an independent artist and, when it suits me and them we come together. This is one of these times."

Little John admits to having difficulties getting his plays produced. The second part of the trilogy, Dead On, is a case in point. Set in the year 2007, it is primarily a comic fantasy that taps into such complex issues as violence against women, vigilantism and refugees. Its central character is himself a refugee whose house was petrol-bombed by the loyalists and who was run out of Belfast by the Provos for "drug-related offences". Though it had a short and successful run in the Druid Theatre last year, he would like a chance to work on it again.

In between, he spends his time driving around Spiddal in a pink cadillac dressed as Elvis, for the filming of Fear an Phoist, a pilot comedy which he hopes will become a series on TG4. Then there's the sneak preview of The Ballad of Jah Kettle up at the station in Caiseal na gCorr before its premiere in the Galway Arts Festival. Bring your insect repellent.

The Derry Boat runs at the Town Hall Studio from Tuesday, July 18th to Saturday, July 22nd at 1 p.m.

The Ballad of Jah Kettle runs at the same venue from Monday, July 24th to Saturday, July 29th at 1 p.m. Sneak previews can be had in Caiseal na gCorr Railway Station, Gweedore, Co. Donegal on Monday, July 10th at 7 p.m. and in Ionad Teampall Chroine, Dungloe on Tuesday, July 11th at 8.30 p.m. Further information from the Earagail Arts Festival. Tel: 074 29186