There are those who were born to perform and there are those who were not. Some would swallow a hedgehog in preference to public humiliation and then there's the rest, those who would rather have a quiet life but will squeeze out a classic on the wedding karaoke with a benign grace if asked. These are Spartacus Chetwynd's performers, regular punters prepared to roll with an artist whose offbeat productions are so shambolic they make Amy Winehouse look like a member of S Club 7.
How to describe the phenomenon that is Spartacus Chetwynd? The anthropology student turned artist who trained at the Slade and the Royal College, Chetwynd adopted the moniker Spartacus in 2004 when she started making a career out of the kind of ramshackle performances that wouldn't look out of place in a kindergarten. The fact that Spartacus was crucified is not lost on her. There's a fine line between hammy, second-rate and the kind of casual anarchy Chetwynd purports; it's as if she's willing the critics to do their worst. Her art is reminiscent of films by the late Derek Jarman, which Tilda Swinton described as having a touch of the "school play" about them. A Spartacus Chetwynd event can look like the ramblings of an amateur dramatics enthusiast, particularly thanks to her makeshift costumes and papier-mache props. "Yeah that whole, 'let's put on a play' thing is certainly part of it," says Chetwynd, "the performances grew out of fancy dress parties I used to have as a student. They were always very elaborate and took months to organise."
While the events may have a DIY aesthetic to rival Blue Peter, the intentions behind them are anything but impulsive. Chetwynd approaches each work as both an anthropologist and a genuine groupie with a messianic zeal to rehabilitate a rum cast of cultural cliches; Jabba the Hutt, Meat Loaf, Michael Jackson, all get a makeover to rival Max Clifford. With Thriller it was the obvious desire to remember the star in his glory days before the catastrophic fall out. Erotics & Bestiality was a homage to Meat Loaf and, like the rock opera Bat Out Of Hell, Chetwynd's performance was an overblown magus opus featuring the sex games of Emperor Nero and Hokusai's tentacle porn as loin-clothed collaborators had their privates tickled by a fuzzy animal and spanked with a flip flop. But it was her rehabilitation of Jabba The Hutt that I'm most fond of. Saddened at the thought of the blubbery slave trader's status as sci-fi offal and at the allusions to Orientalism, she re-imagined the Hutt as an affable pina colada-sucking bon viveur relegated to acting villains in B movies. An Evening With Jabba The Hutt saw a cast of slovenly bikini-clad lovelies partying the night away with their flab daddy. Priceless entertainment.
There is something emotive about the characters Chetwynd champions. She opts for the freaks, those who have been lampooned not for their talent but their emotional or physical vulnerability - the lion-loving, human-shy Joy Adamson in her re-enactment of Born Free (complete with crooning lounge singer accompaniment), the emotionally crippled Incredible Hulk, the psychologically scarred Jackson - and in doing so reveals something of our social ills. Her actors stumble through their parts with an engaging benevolence, drinking, chatting, shrugging off the artifice with an easy nonchalance that somehow elevates the original rather than disabusing it. This can only come from Chetwynd's status as a self-confessed fan and the goodwill of her performers who are more than happy to go along with her oddball ideas. She quotes Homer Simpson in her catalogue: "I know now what I can offer you that no one else can. Complete and utter dependence!"
Having recently staged The Snail Race in Milan - devised with all the pomp and circumstance of the Palio di Siena - Chetwynd is now planning on taking her art back to its beginnings. She's setting up a club night called Sugar Tits Doom Club, inspired by Mel Gibson's intoxicated ravings when he got pulled over for drink driving: "I'm trying to find a venue at the moment, I want it to be in something between a community centre and a basketball court." She is also staging her annual film event Spanky Chaffinche's Film Festival at London's Studio Voltaire. Her desire to pull back from the big performances is unsurprising. As her reputation grows, so do the budgets, venues and calibre of promotion - which ultimately has an effect on her lo-fi productions. What makes a Spartacus Chetwynd event is her ability to motivate the everyman into acts of rational absurdity. If, as Joseph Beuys declared, "everyone is an artist", then in Chetwynd's world everyone is a performer too.
· Spanky Chaffinche's Film Festival, Studio Voltaire, SW4, April 27, 3pm