George Brant’s Grounded is an aggressive and
provocative monologue. While you could almost call it a poem in many respects, or
perhaps a poetic monologue, what you notice first is its language – its command
of it, as much as the voice it is spoken by (or written for); and from the
first moments, you are pushed back in your seat by the G-force of this play as
it hurtles through the sky of the Seymour
Centre’s Reginald theatre over the course of eighty tense minutes.
First produced in
2013, and presented here by Melbourne-based company Red Stitch Actors Theatre, this production of Grounded is
riveting and mesmerising. While essentially the story of a fighter pilot in the
US
military who becomes pregnant and is reassigned to piloting drones, this is
merely the set-up for Brant’s play. What Brant explores – and what the
production, directed by Kirsten von Bibra, does so well – is show the
psychological effects of this relocation on the pilot (she is never named), how
hard it is for her to readjust to the mindset and pressures of remote-control
drone operation.