In her long and eclectic career, Isabella Rossellini has played everything from a seductress with the secret to eternal life to a worm. She took on the latter role in Green Porno, a 2008 Sundance short film series exploring animal sexual behavior through wacky props and costumes. Its cult success spawned Green Porno, Live on Stage, a one-woman show hitting the Cutler Majestic Theatre on Feb. 13-15. Before her stop in town, the actress chatted with us about the birds and the bees.

How do you get into character before a show? Well, I’m not in character; I play myself. So, I just have to remember the words! [Laughs.] It’s about 50 pages. And I have to do it in three languages, so I have to remember not to mix them up.

So you don’t use a lot of props? The show is conceived as a conference, so I just have a podium. But the podium sort of transforms itself into a little theater. I do puppet theater and then behind it there are a lot of animals and things I pull out. So it’s a little more magical than just a podium. The show is illustrated with a lot of my films and a lot of images of my films. It’s visually very vivacious.

Is there an animal whose mating rituals you find particularly relatable? Well, the show doesn’t really want to tell people how to better make love to their wife or husband. The intent isn’t to give people tips for their personal life. [Laughs.] It’s based on science, and it’s a comical monologue about biology.

How has the reception been thus far? We didn’t think we would go to so many cities—35, 40 cities and three continents! It’s really big for what it is. It started, really, as just an experiment.

If you could be reincarnated and come back as an animal, what would it be? I would probably come back as a dog that lives in the United States. Because all the wild animals are endangered, losing their habitats and poisoned by pollution, or they’re hunted. Domestic animals, and especially a dog, where you have a garden and you can lie on the sofa—you have a wonderful life.