W HILE May Day and protest are natural bedfellows, some governments might have preferred to re-brand the occasion.

This was recognised in the early days of Mayfest, Glasgow's trade union-backed arts festival. It's something that is also clear in Mayfesto, the Tron Theatre's annual month of politically inclined theatre, which acknowledges its obvious debt to the defunct festival. While Mayfesto 2012 has scaled back its activities prior to a larger, city-wide event set to take place in 2013, the radical slack has been picked up by the National Theatre of Scotland, whose second Five Minute Theatre event takes protest as its very pertinent theme.

Following on from the inaugural Five Minute Theatre which, over 24 hours, streamed more than 200 new miniature plays which were selected from more than twice that number live over the internet, this year the NTS, in association with STV, has opted for a leaner model. Rather than an all-day affair, the company has opted for a 6pm to midnight running time, with 72 works being broadcast from one hub at The Tron, timed to coincide with the launch of Mayfesto. If the relative brevity of this year's event sounds like the NTS might be slacking, the audience development manager and co-ordinator of Five Minute Theatre begs to differ.

"It's been mental," Marianne Maxwell says, still in the thick of pulling together a set of events UK-wide with input from all over the world. "I'm just about to face the running order problem."

Today's protest-based Five Minute Theatre looks set to be the first of five similarly styled events set to happen throughout the year. With each one picking up a different theme, the central hub will also be a different geographical location.

"We wanted to make it shorter and sharper," Maxwell explains, "and to make Five Minute Theatre happen in more concentrated bursts. The impact the first one had on us as a company was immense. It was such a great way to celebrate the NTS fifth birthday, and we knew we wanted to do it again, but we also knew we wanted to make it different in some way. Once the dust settled after the first one, we raised ideas at development and planning meetings, and this concept of doing five came up, and that sounded an interesting way of seeing what could happen.

"We'd talked about the possibility of theming last year's event as well, but part of the glory of Five Minute Theatre last year was that anything and everything might happen."

The idea of taking protest as a theme came about while Maxwell was talking to playwright David Greig and David MacLennan, the brains behind Oran Mor's lunchtime theatre phenomenon, A Play, A Pie and A Pint. Both men were in the throes of pulling together Oran Mor's One Day in Spring season of plays by writers from Arab companies which, in co-production with the NTS, is currently ongoing, both at Oran Mor and the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh. Given the nature of the One Day in Spring season, as well as a slew of politically motivated works, the connections seemed obvious. In the end, it was NTS artistic director Vicky Featherstone who picked up on the idea of protest because, as Maxwell observes, "a play can be protesting about anything."

With this in mind, works range from both seasoned theatre professionals as well as school groups and individuals with little or no theatre experience. So while actor Tam Dean takes a unique look at Robert Burns, singer Karine Polwart will broadcast an instrumental and vocal-based piece about a woman's enforced eviction from a living room in Midlothian. David MacLennan and his Oran Mor team perform excerpts from their Jacques Rousseau Show, and in Aberdeen a group of eight-year-olds will perform a piece about two sisters protesting about their parents splitting up.

In Edinburgh, the Traverse Young Writers Group will present a piece on conflict between pandas and penguins in Edinburgh Zoo, while at Out of the Blue, a group of aerialists will focus on the rise of youth protesters today, and performance poet Michael Pederson's two-hander has a Bolshie bank customer become embroiled in an amorous encounter at a call centre.

Also in Edinburgh, the staff of the Bongo Club, currently under threat of eviction by Edinburgh University, will make their feelings on that situation clear, while playwright Kris Haddow will present a critique of the current debacle around the Scottish Government's changes to Public Entertainment License legislation.

"There are hardline looks at global issues," Maxwell says, "but there are lots of people protesting about relationships as well, which I was a bit surprised about. We could have had a whole relationship hour if we'd wanted. A lot that came in about the First World War and conscientious objectors, particularly from schools."

In Glasgow, among the 29 pieces on offer, there will be a flash mob in George Square and broadcasts from an army recruiting office and a tenement bedroom. Other works come from Renfrewshire, Dumbarton, Ayrshire, Dundee, Bo'ness and Fife.

While some contributions will be pre-recorded, most plays will be performed live, broadcast via two roving camera crews in Edinburgh and Glasgow, as well as a live feed from Orkney. As each play streams over the event's six-hour period, there will be the opportunity for audiences to comment via a live chat feed. Beyond the work, this was one of the 2011 event's big success stories.

"The thing we learned last year is that people really want to talk about theatre," Maxwell explains. "Having the live online chat facility, people could just blether, and that was brilliant."

In all respects, then, and if last year is anything to go by, Five Minute Theatre is an exercise in mass participation in artistic endeavour that ticks all the boxes in terms of social inclusion without ever feeling forced. With the next Five Minute Theatre scheduled for the summer, Maxwell is confident the concept has legs.

"We now have the kit to do something like this," she says. "We also have the experience to do it, and the more often our crews do Five Minute Theatre, the more expert they'll become at it."

The NTS seems to have tapped into a resurgence of people power that politicians should probably take very seriously indeed.

"I think we've reached a tipping point," Maxwell acknowledges. "It's really interesting what's going on just now and the artistic responses to that. But it's not just theatre-makers who want to protest. It's everybody."

Five Minute Theatre is streamed live online today, 6pm-midnight. A live hub is based at the Tron Theatre, Glasgow. Visit www.nationaltheatrescotland.com, www.fiveminutetheatre.com.