Bellport’s resident model, filmmaker, actress and artist, Isabella Rossellini, is getting ready to take the stage at the village’s renowned Gateway Playhouse this winter.
Rossellini — who in 1986 won The Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead in David Lynch’s, Blue Velvet — will star in a one woman show called “Link Link Circus.”
There will be two shows, both in February.
The first happens at 8 p.m. on Feb. 16, followed by a 4 p.m. performance on Feb. 17.
Proceeds will benefit The Gateway and The Plaza Cinema and Media Arts Center in Patchogue.
“I called [Plaza Cinema director] Catherine Oberg two months ago and I said, I’m an actress, I’ve written three plays, and I haven’t done one in my hometown. Would you accept me to come and do this?” said Rossellini. “She welcomed me and I’m so grateful.”
After the success of her previous live show, “Green Porno,” which aired as a Sundance Channel series four years ago, Rossellini decided she had more to give her audience.
Her first show “was from waist down, about animals and how they reproduce,” she said. “This one is from waist up, about animal intelligence.”
The Gateway Playhouse is calling the play “a smart yet comedic look at the links between humans and animals.”
Rossellini, daughter of legendary screen actress Ingrid Bergman, has recently been focused on her love for animal behavior and wildlife conservation — an interest she’s had since she was a girl.
“Only when I got older did I go back to school to study what I always loved, animal behavior,” said Rossellini, who is pursuing a master’s degree at Hunter College in New York City.
“Everything that I studied at school that was very serious, I tried to visualize it and make it fun,” she says in a four-minute video (below).
Rossellini will be playing a comedic yet intelligent ringmaster in the one hour and ten-minute theatricalized lecture with no intermission.
But the bright-eyed ringmaster won’t be alone after all. Audiences can expect Rossellini to be accompanied by a small rescue dog with a patchy coat wearing an array of amusing costumes.
Rossellini and her production team have worked hard to compile home movies, puppets, old toys, comic films, and animated drawings to ensure that “Link Link Circus” will charm its viewers, she says.
Rossellini hopes that she can make her audience laugh and marvel all at once, while dishing the details of human to animal connections, domestication and evolution.
She explores questions such as, why do we have maternal tendencies towards our pets?
And do animals have souls?
GreaterPatchogue.com asked her why she chose Bellport’s Gateway Playhouse as her main stage.
“Bellport has become my residence,” she said. “To me, the playhouse is an incredible resource. There is this access to the arts that isn’t the big, mega-film culture and that’s what I missed.
“I can’t believe it’s in our little village.”
Featured Photo: Isabella Rossellini, Scot Allan of The Gateway and Catherine Oberg of Plaza Media Arts Center outside The Gateway in Bellport last week. (Credit: Jodi Giambrone)
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