Ten years ago, when Bill Mitchell was artistic director of Kneehigh Theatre, he started something called Wild Walks.

A group of 50 unsuspecting souls would be led on a walk through a wood and, as they progressed, "things would happen". What things, Bill, I ask? "Oh, it was all charmingly simple," he says.

"There was a doorbell on a tree, a lover carrying cake, somebody relentlessly playing Caruso records and an alien trying to fly home. There always seems to be a character with wings in the shows I do."

Mitchell has always loved designing and directing landscape theatre. Under his jurisdiction, Kneehigh staged productions on cliffs, in industrial sites and even at a UN border post. They used bikers to ferry actors to and from a quarry and began to develop works which spread across vast distances.

When invited to develop a show in Malta, they took over the grand harbour, roping in Maltese abseilers and speedboat owners and swinging local actors over the water on 300ft-high cranes.

Now Mitchell has established Wildworks, a company specifically dedicated to staging spectacular landscape theatre projects. And Souterrain, a partnership between Zap Art and Streets Of Brighton, is set to take his passion for unconventional and evocative theatre spaces to a whole new level.

Premiering in Brighton before moving on to specific locations in Hastings and France, Souterrain is loosely based on Orpheus' quest to rescue his dead wife Eurydices from the Underworld.

The audience will journey with him, following the action through a living stage set which takes in the churchyard, farm buildings and hidden corners of Stanmer village.

"We've invented a world which is quite like ours but strangely different," explains Mitchell. "It's like looking at ordinary things in a strange context - imagine somebody ironing in the front garden.

"Stanmer village is the Underworld and to reach it you have to cross the churchyard and walk through Hades' gateway which is a cross between a watchmen's tower and a customs post - because, how do you get into the Underworld when you're alive?"

Wildworks consists of a core company of performers, musicians and makers which is added to in each new location in order to "add layers and bend the meaning". A local choir and band have been working with them for the past six months and their live music will combine with the poetic action and haunting imagery.

"We're not a company who do something on a green splat of land that could be anywhere," explains Mitchell.

"The place we're in is really, really important to us. My ambition would be that people are so engaged that they follow the story and don't even know they've moved."

Starts at 8.30pm, tickets cost £12.50 and £8, call 01273 709709