About the Play:

Grounded is a full-length drama by George Brant. The play follows a hotshot fighter pilot's journey as her career takes a twist. Sidelined by an unexpected pregnancy, she is forced to operate military drones from a windowless trailer in the Las Vegas desert. A tour-de-force play for one actress, Grounded flies from the heights of lyricism to the shallows of workaday existence, targeting our assumptions about war, family, and the power of storytelling.

Grounded tells the story of a daring F16 fighter pilot who is "grounded" from flying because of an unexpected pregnancy. When returning to duty, she is reassigned to "combat" by operating lethal drones from an air-conditioned windowless trailer outside Las Vegas, thousands of miles away from the battlefield. She struggles through surreal twelve-hour days on what she calls "the chairforce", hunting terrorists by day and being a wife and mother by night. But navigating the shift may prove to be the most dangerous mission of all. As the moral and psychological pressure to track a high-profile target mounts, the boundaries begin to blur between the desert in which she lives and the one she patrols by remote-control half a world away.

Grounded had a rolling premiere in 2012 by SF Playhouse (California), Borderlands Theatre (Arizona), and Unicorn Theatre (Missouri) as part of the National New Play Network's Continued Life Program, and won NNPN's Smith Prize. It was a huge hit in Edinburgh at the Traverse Theatre in 2013, winning the Fringe First award; went on to the Gate Theatre in London and was named a Top 10 London Play both The Guardian and The Evening Standard; and opened in 2014 at off-Off Broadway's Walkerspace at Soho Rep in New York City. The play has become a global phenomenon receiving over 100 regional, fringe festival, college, and community theatre productions in 17 different countries and has been translated into 11 languages.

Cast: 1 female

What people say:

"Grounded is a heartbreaking, beautiful, necessary and perfectly-structured solo drama… an essential story for our times." — The Scotsman

"Gripping… presents a convincing portrait." — The New York Times

"As close to perfection as is possible to imagine... Grounded is a powerful, hallucinogenic experience." — What's On Stage

"Critic's Pick. A scorching sharp-eyed, timely script… lets no one off easy… clap all you want at the end of the play – and you'll want to clap a lot – but the game stays with you." — Time Out New York

"Must be seen… a play with a political point, but told with such depth and feeling that it becomes a thing of beauty." — Fringe Review

About the Playwright:

George Brant is an American playwright. He received his MFA in Writing from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin and is the author of several award-winning plays, most notably Grounded.