FIU Theatre to premiere Heather Woodbury’s ‘As the Globe Warms’ July 6


Endangered frogs, whirling dervishes, desperate scientists and Evangelicals gone wild are just a few of the elements in As the Globe Warms, a new one-woman show written and directed by award-winning writer-performer Heather Woodbury.

The show, presented by FIU Theatre, is set to open on Friday, July 6, at 8 p.m., in the Wertheim Performing Arts Center at Modesto A. Maidique Campus. Admission is free, but donations are welcome.

Woodbury, a theatre artist known for sprawling solo and ensemble works that combine the immediacy of performance art with the scope of a novel, is FIU Theatre’s artist-in-residence this summer. She brings As the Globe Warms, her solo performance novel to the department’s Alternative Theatre Festival, under the direction of theatre Professor Michael Yawney. The epic story showcases Woodbury as she portrays a cornucopia of characters and is presented in six parts that can be viewed individually but form a complex and continuous saga.

Set in the fictional town of Vane Springs, Nev., the tale follows a herpetologist who arrives to save a unique species of frog from extinction. He meets the home-schooled daughter of the town’s preacher and an unlikely friendship forms with far-reaching consequences for them, their families and the people and creatures of Vane Springs. In the mix are Tea Party zealots, closeted gays, a struggling working class family, and eyewitness reports from whales, polar bears, bats and frogs. But at the heart of the story is the exploration of what it is like to survive in America today, on a planet edging toward climate crisis.

As the Globe Warms will be performed July 6-7, July 13-14 and July 20-21 at 8 p.m.