SHERMAN OAKS, Cali. — Ever wonder what a cockroach is thinking? Well, leave out an antique typewriter and you may get the answer. 

Actor Dan Gilvezan was in an old bookstore when he stumbled upon a collection of columns titled “Archy and Mehitabel.”

The book, written by Don Marquis, was originally published nearly a century ago and is still in print, full of stories that revolve around a deep thinking and observant bug.

“And the conceit was that a poet had died and his soul got transmigrated or reincarnated as a cockroach,” Gilvezan explained.

The columns, which appeared in the “New York Evening Sun,” date back to 1916. In them, Archy the Cockroach doesn’t just casually type on the old manual typewriter to create his poems. He really throws himself into his work.

“He hops on the keys of this typewriter,” Gilvezan said, “and leaves messages for who he calls the Boss — the editor of the paper.”

However, being a cockroach, he does have limitations. For instance, he can’t hold down the shift key “So all of the columns that Marques wrote were written in lower case, he pointed out,“ and there was no punctuation whatsoever.”

Gilvezan took these columns and crafted them into an original play called The Secret World of Archy & Mehitabel. The show is populated with the less than desirable creatures who inhabit what the cockroach describes as the underworld: rats, fleas and spiders, to name a few. Archy’s observations about them are really reflections on human nature — reflections that remain remarkably current.

“Because believe it or not, we as human beings have not changed all that much in the last 100 years,” Gilvezan says with a knowing smile. “We’re still just as greedy, just as selfish, just as self-centered.”

Perhaps the exception is Archy’s best friend, Mehitabel, played by Carolyn Hennesy.

“She’s feisty,” Gilvezan said.

“Well, absolutely,” Hennesy purred, “but only in the best possible way.”

Mehitabel is a slightly worse for the wear alley cat who claims to have been Cleopatra, among other royal reincarnations. It creates a dichotomy that Hennesy has a lot of fun playing. “She tries to maintain this aura of royalty and grace and class, slight little superiority,” she explained, “and then she’s eating fish heads.” 

Hennesy, a longtime animal activist and advocate, also finds the material incredibly timely and deeply moving. “It touches on the treatment of creatures that we have determined to be lesser than us, that aren’t,” she said.

By writing through the lens of creatures small and smaller, Marquis was able to comment not just on culture and the human condition but also on the issues of the day — issues like climate change, with Archy warning of a dire, drier future. 

“So it’s all universal and all incredibly relevant and topical,” Hennesy said.

Like it or not, Gilvesan expects audiences will find some familiar personality traits inside the vignettes, which are teeming with greed, envy and egotism.

“That’s just like my neighbor. My boss is just like that,” he imagined the audience might say, adding, “Most people don’t really admit that that’s them.”

This isn’t his first time playing a bug. Gilvesan was the voice of Peter Parker in the animated series Spiderman and his Amazing Friends. His Spidey sense was already well developed, but now, through writing and inhabiting Archy, he’s learned to be more adept at detecting pesky qualities.

“I try to remember what Archy tells us about being selfish and self-centered,” he recalled. “Don’t do it. Don’t do it. It’s not attractive.” The best advice you’ll probably ever get from a cockroach in a bowler hat.

“The Secret World of Archy and Mehitabel” runs through Oct. 15 at the Whitefire Theatre in Sherman Oaks.