While recognizable for his roles in straight-faced Canadian television dramas like Traders and The Eleventh Hour, playwright-actor Chris Leavins is becoming famous for telling jokes about crazy cat ladies, horny horses and animal poo. Cute With Chris, the one-man internet show — and YouTube hit — that he anchors from his own apartment, is a dry, satirical take on cyberspace’s infatuation with all things furry and adorable. The live theatrical version gives fans a closer look at the man behind the kitty litter box.

“When people watch Cute With Chris, I don’t think they really learn a lot about me,” says Leavins. “It’s more about the viewers and their lives — whereas the live version is more about me and my journey in creating the show. I have this weird, rabid fan base and I wanted to try to bring them into the theatrical realm where they can meet in person.”

How similar is your live show to your internet show? Do we see all the familiar tropes, like Colty and Pervy the talking plastic horses?
Nope, absolutely not. It’s completely different. I’ve designed it so that people who are completely unfamiliar with the show can come to the live show and understand it, while people who are familiar with the show will learn a lot more about how it’s made. They can experience it in a different way. It’s a completely different medium. I tried transposing a lot of the internet tropes to the stage and it just wasn’t effective in the same way. I just don’t have the same techniques at my disposal in the theatre.

In one episode you briefly poke fun at the perils of being a struggling Canadian actor. Is that from personal experience?
Well, my film and TV career always sort of took care of itself — that was the easy part of my acting career. But while I was doing that, I was also writing and producing solo shows that I put on in Toronto, mostly through the theatrical festival circuit. It was always extremely difficult to get audiences out. I mean, you know, nobody wants to go to the theatre. The last show I did had been programmed at 11 at night on a Thursday and there were four people in the audience. I took a handful of free tickets and went out onto the street and tried to give tickets away, and still nobody wanted them. That was sort of the turning point for me; I said to myself, “If I’m going to continue to do this, I need to be smarter about it.” So when internet video came into play, I really dedicated all the skills I had been putting into the theatre into the internet. And then I built up an audience who will now follow me to the theatre. I’ve had to add a whole bunch of shows in Toronto because they all sold out.

So why the obsession with cute furry animals?
I have no obsession with cute furry animals at all. I started my show on that kind of a premise because it was inherently comedic and also it was specifically net centered. You know, when net video took off, all these websites started up devoted to cute things. I was fascinated with the way the internet functioned as this giant picture book. And I thought there was an inherent tension there that I could explore. I mean, I’m definitely not a fan of cute stuff [laughs].

There’s a considerable amount of ugly in your show as well.
Yeah, I mean I like animals. I think it’s important to understand what it’s like to actually own and raise an animal and I try to show it isn’t all just cuteness. There are health problems and behavior problems that are part of the package. And cat anuses. If you own a pet, it is basically 12 to 15 years of monitoring their bathroom habits.

You often say your audience is predominantly composed of teenage girls. Do you think most of them catch onto the cynicism and irony in your show, or do they take it literally and tune in because they think it’s cute?
They catch onto the cynicism and irony. You know, not all teenage girls are Paris Hilton. My show appeals to the kind of teenager who hates teenagers. These are sort of the disenfranchised, edgy teen girls who grow up to be fantastic women. The teenagers who come to my show — I am shocked and amazed at how incredibly cool, poised and composed they are. I don’t remember teenagers being like that when I was a teenager. They’re all really intelligent, interesting people with great senses of humour. I don’t think the media and the internet really give those types of teenagers a place to see themselves. I don’t think they’re represented very well.

Almost two years into it, would you say your show has changed at all since the onset?
The show as it stands now is completely different than when I started. [At the beginning] I think it was more traditional and more based on the TV model. I hadn’t discovered my voice and I hadn’t really understood why I was exploring the cute trope. I think the early shows were … kinda cute [laughs]. I think it turned a lot of people off — it certainly turned me off. I really had to examine why I had chosen to work in that milieu, and I’m much happier with the place I’m at now. I think now, cute is superfluous. The show could really be about anything; it’s about the people who watch it.