SHE is better known for her protests than her performance abilities, but this weekend former socialist MSP Rosie Kane will take to the stage in a show about her life.

In An Evening With Rosie Kane, she'll play an altogether different persona from her political one although, she insists, politics will remain at the heart of her new endeavour.

Ms Kane, 50, has written the comic show about her life and will perform at Glasgow's Tron Theatre tomorrow. And she claims the audience will be in for a few surprises.

Her most controversial moment as a politician came when she had to swear an oath of allegiance to the Queen when taking her seat at the Holyrood parliament in 2003. The socialist firebrand wrote on the palm of her hand: "My oath is to the people."

She promised to shake up parliament but lost her seat in 2007 before which she had suffered from clinical depression and had to take time off from Holyrood.

Spanning her entire life, the show includes musical numbers and will focus on the night she was elected.

She said: "I think people will be quite surprised by what happened that night because it's not been discussed - how I was feeling or what actually happened that night. It's about serendipity – right up until even that happy accident – and how I felt about that."

The idea for the show came after she got involved with a women's drama group which developed an anti-poverty musical, called Miss Smith, about a single mum struggling to cope. The show is due to tour Scotland in August.

An Evening With Rosie Kane was developed to raise funds to allow the group to present the not-for-profit play for free and the Tron is donating 60% of the proceeds from Ms Kane's show to the group.

Both works tackle what Ms Kane says is a lack of political theatre in Scotland.

The former Scottish Socialist MSP said: "If you can offer free theatre – but theatre that's also speaking to the poverty and saying, 'We can hear you' – that's an important political act. It's important to make people understand this is direct action, political theatre. It's got a reason behind it.

"When people are really struggling, the one thing they reach out to is theatre. But it needs to be accessible and relate to people and show it's not an elite thing."

Asked about her own show, Ms Kane, who is a grandmother, said: "I'm enjoying the opportunity because I'm not shy.

"If you stand up at parliament and you stand up at protests, then this is just another one of those things. It's a great opportunity to hopefully make people laugh and let them get involved in community theatre."

Ms Kane, who gave evidence against her party's one-time leader Tommy Sherdian at his perjury trial, will also make references to the NHS and justice.

She said: "I've always been portrayed as quite an angry person, because I am angry a lot. But I actually really enjoy comedy and have always wanted to do what I'm doing."

She admits preparing for the comedy aspects of the show has been "challenging".

She said: "When you're doing a script and playing a person, you can get a character and behave in a certain way, but I've got to behave like me."

Asked if she had plans to take her show to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Ms Kane said: "I would love that."

l An Evening with Rosie Kane is at the Tron Theatre on Saturday at 8pm. Tickets priced £10.