Grounded developed from playwright George Brant’s curiosity about drone warfare. “I had a general interest in drones, and wanted to learn more about them,” he says. “Once I found out they were flown from the US, I got more interested. I approached this play with a lot of questions and wasn’t sure where I stood with this new technology and the moral implications of it; I’m happy anytime American soldiers lives are not at risk, but am troubled by some of the moral implications of [drone warfare] and what it’s doing to our standing in the world.”
The real trick of the play, however, is less ideological than theatrical: having read a series of interviews with pilots, Brant was interested in capturing the rhythm of flying unmanned airplanes. “I wanted to try to create the tension that these pilot said they felt,” he said. “There are stretches of doing absolutely nothing that are alternated with these high-stress situations.” The result, directed by Gate Theatre Artistic Director Christopher Haydon, has been called “theatre's answer to Zero Dark Thirty” (The Independent.)
Actor Lucy Ellington, an associate artist with London’s Gate Theatre, who plays the pilot, agrees. “It sounds like a call centre,” she says. “The hours are long, the toilet breaks are designated, the snack machine is a highlight of the day. The play deals with her role as a mother who has to juggle work and parenthood. Being a drone pilot is a 9-to-5 job: there are no barracks and you go home after work which makes for a strange transition compared to being on a tour of duty.” The Pilot, used to the daredevil freedom in the air over Afghanistan, accommodates herself to 12-hour shifts in the Nevada desert, free to go home to her new husband and daughter, but unable to quite adjust to her newly domesticated life.
Together, Brant’s script, Ellington’s searing performance, and the work of a full team of designers at the top of their game embody the shifting rhythms and moral landscape of 21st-century warfare in this visceral and immediate play.
For a sense of the Pilot’s workday, click here for a narrated infrared video of an MQ-1 Predator drone strike on suspected insurgents in Afghanistan.
— Adrien-Alice Hansel