Isabella Rossellini: Still Bugging Out

"I would die without my penis!" declares Isabella Rossellini dramatically, dressed in a bumblebee costume in one of the charming, loopy short films that make up her Green Porno series, which depicts the sex lives of insects and animals in all their weird glory. (Bee dicks, apparently, get stuck in female bees and severed mid-flight.) Since its inception in 2008, Rossellini has done three seasons and released a Green Porno book. Now she's bringing the project to the stage with a touring production co-written with Jean-Claude Carriere that comes to New York's Brooklyn Academy of Music (January 16-25). Rossellini describes the show as a monologue delivered from behind a lectern, just like a normal scientific conference -- at least at first. "My podium is not just a podium," she says. "It has a little magic touch to it." No doubt.

The Gay Wild
"You know, some people look at homosexuality as against nature or maybe brought on by our culture -- something that wasn't dictated by the way nature is. There is more and more indication that, actually, the act of sexuality doesn't serve only reproduction, but might be used for other reasons... A lot of species have homosexuality. So why is that, if sexuality is only for reproduction? We might have made a mistake there."

A Family Affair
"When I started the series, my son was 14 or so, and that's the age where you want to really separate from the family. He didn't seem really interested in anything I did, but Green Porno he loved. He took all my films to school, and there was a group of teachers that selected it for their classes on science. I was very honored."

Her Next Life
"I don't want to be reincarnated into a wild animal, because they're all very much battered by us. I would be a domestic animal, something that is not eaten or brought up in an industrial factory, like beef, pork, chicken. A pet would be the best solution -- dog or cat. A dog of a person with a house in the country, so I'm not locked in an apartment all day by myself."

On Donning Bug Drag
"Sometimes with insects, the female is quite big and doesn't move so much. For example, the female spider generally is very, very big, and the male is very small. The female just stays on her web, waiting for a fly to bounce and get caught in it so she can eat it. I did the male, because the male had to move.
I do anything that moves!"

Green Porno Live on Stage, Jan. 16-25, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Fisher Space, New York City.

WATCH Isabella Rossellini as a Bee: