Isabella Rossellini to Bring GREEN PORNO to Melbourne Arts Centre, 26 March

Maggie Gerrand has announced that Isabella Rossellini will be performing Green Porno at Melbourne Arts Centre on Wednesday 26 March. Melbourne fans now have an opportunity to see the screen icon Isabella Rossellini perform her new, playful and wonderfully odd stage show Green Porno, a one-woman comedy about mating in the natural world.

In Green Porno, Rossellini takes us on an unusual and fascinating journey into the sex life and mating habits of a number of land and marine animals - the snail, the worm, the fly, the shrimp, the deadly spider, the praying mantis, the anchovy and the bi-phallic snake.

Green Porno originally began in 2008 when Robert Redford encouraged Rossellini to create short environmental films for his Sundance TV Channel. Rossellini knew it was a unique opportunity, "I particularly love short films, I've always been interested in animal behaviour, and I certainly know a lot of people that are interested in sex. So here you have the three elements that make the core concept of Green Porno - short stories, animals and sex."

The critically acclaimed and provocative short film series ran for three seasons and saw Rossellini dressed in a stunning variety of insect and sea-creature costumes as she described and enacted the mating rituals of various wildlife. A book followed and now, the stage adaptation, which has its world premiere in Los Angeles in November 2013.

Written by Rossellini - who is currently studying animal behaviour at Hunter College in New York - and Jean-Claude Carrière, Green Porno mixes live performance with several of the short films. Each story, read and performed on stage by Rossellini is scientifically accurate and in each of the films she presents herself as a particular animal.

A quietly influential force in art cinema, screenwriter Carrière (also an author, actor, opera librettist, and occasional director), has collaborated with such important screen artists as Luis Buñuel, Milos Forman, Jean-Luc Godard, Philip Kaufman, Louis Malle, Nagisa Oshima, Volker Schlöndorff, and Andrzej Wajda.