What do you think?
Rate this book
Grounded
From the award-winning playwright of Elephant's Graveyard , George Brant, comes the story of an ace fighter pilot who's career in the sky is ended early due to an unexpected pregnancy. Reassigned to operate military drones from a windowless trailer outside Las Vegas, she hunts terrorists by day and returns to her family each night. As the 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 half a world a
66 pages, Paperback
First published August 2, 2013
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
April 14, 2016
White people's problems, part 94
In this taut/searing/gutwrenching/insightful (delete as applicable) one-act play, a female fighter pilot discovers she's pregnant, and, on returning from maternity leave, is told she can no longer fly jets. She's going to have to move to Nevada and join the Chair Force, as I learned it was called, to remote-pilot drones instead. It's a terrible job. She heads off each day to work a 12 hour shift tracking potential terrorists in Afghanistan, watching them on her TV monitor and trying to decide whether to take them out. It turns out that some of these terrorists have families, just like her! And, you know,
Poor thing! Though articles like the one I just read make me suspect that the people on the other end of this particular relationship are having an even worse time. Incredible as it may sound.
In this taut/searing/gutwrenching/insightful (delete as applicable) one-act play, a female fighter pilot discovers she's pregnant, and, on returning from maternity leave, is told she can no longer fly jets. She's going to have to move to Nevada and join the Chair Force, as I learned it was called, to remote-pilot drones instead. It's a terrible job. She heads off each day to work a 12 hour shift tracking potential terrorists in Afghanistan, watching them on her TV monitor and trying to decide whether to take them out. It turns out that some of these terrorists have families, just like her! And, you know,
Poor thing! Though articles like the one I just read make me suspect that the people on the other end of this particular relationship are having an even worse time. Incredible as it may sound.
September 6, 2024
In George Brandt’s one-woman play Grounded, currently (2024) a high-tech opera, American fighter pilot Jess gets pregnant while on R&R. Jess is a self-described G-force freak and loves sorties. After giving birth and setting up a family, Jess reports back to work to learn she’s been reassigned. She’ll be piloting drones remotely. This is unacceptable to her after all her training, but she has no choice and obeys orders.
Jess’s combat skills are overhauled to guiding thirty-million-dollar Reaper Drones from a top clearance trailer in the Nevada desert with nothing around. The plot twist. Jess never minded administering death in a Falcon jet. Her moral crisis happens at a desk, on a computer, with a joystick and precision satellites.
Jess’s combat skills are overhauled to guiding thirty-million-dollar Reaper Drones from a top clearance trailer in the Nevada desert with nothing around. The plot twist. Jess never minded administering death in a Falcon jet. Her moral crisis happens at a desk, on a computer, with a joystick and precision satellites.
August 25, 2018
I can't handle this beauty or these feelings and my heart is hurt and awake.
August 21, 2021
Reading a play like this, a devised one-woman show, is always a bit difficult. There's not a lot of written direction to help provide a framework to visualize a performance-- at least that's kind of how I feel as a person which very little theatre background. Instead, the structure invited me to read this piece like a poem. I found myself rereading sections, turning over the words in my head carefully, tracing the increasingly strange, sad, grey world. I think it's fitting to treat this like an epic-- the Pilot herself invites this reading, comparing her journey to and from war to Odysseus if he came home every day.
On one hand, it feels very timely to read this piece now as the US ends its 20 year war in Afghanistan and many people will be returning home (or are home) bringing the war with them. On the other hand, it's hard to read this and not think of the scars and trauma left in the desert that Brant's Pilot surveils.
The Pilot's fixation on surveillance sticks strongly in my mind for so many reasons. It's hard not to read about the constant watching military-aged men in the desert, and not think about how that is reflected in the US, not only in malls but in inner-cities and neighborhoods. While Brant's Pilot focuses on the 'eye in the sky' in casinos and shopping malls, there's a distinct and intentional parallel between the policing of Black communities in the US and the war on brown communities abroad. But then-- maybe that's on me for assuming the Pilot's whiteness. Being followed by a shopping mall security camera or watched by your boss at work certainly means something different for non-white people in the US.
On one hand, it feels very timely to read this piece now as the US ends its 20 year war in Afghanistan and many people will be returning home (or are home) bringing the war with them. On the other hand, it's hard to read this and not think of the scars and trauma left in the desert that Brant's Pilot surveils.
The Pilot's fixation on surveillance sticks strongly in my mind for so many reasons. It's hard not to read about the constant watching military-aged men in the desert, and not think about how that is reflected in the US, not only in malls but in inner-cities and neighborhoods. While Brant's Pilot focuses on the 'eye in the sky' in casinos and shopping malls, there's a distinct and intentional parallel between the policing of Black communities in the US and the war on brown communities abroad. But then-- maybe that's on me for assuming the Pilot's whiteness. Being followed by a shopping mall security camera or watched by your boss at work certainly means something different for non-white people in the US.
October 19, 2024
This play (now also an opera) is the flip side of Top Gun. The glamour and the glory of being a fighter pilot loses some of its glitz and glitter when the pilot is not witnessing the results of his work from way up in the wild blue yonder. Some allure is lost when instead the pilot has an up close look at the ghastliness of the impact of his job and a focused look at the faces of the innocent collateral damage he's destroying.
June 23, 2025
This is my first time reading a one woman show, and the down to earth language carried me throughout the story, and then the juxtaposition between her very beautifully descriptive language. Heart wrenching, clever, and I really enjoyed this!
May 5, 2017
Great.
May 17, 2021
Fantastic One-Woman Show
January 18, 2022
While a play is always meant to be experienced live with an actor’s choices coloring the text, this is an amazing piece. Read it and understand that people sacrifice so much, including their sanity.
February 1, 2024
Truly Terrifying
I saw this play years ago and was deeply moved by it. Reading it brought it all back. Powerful. And thought provoking
I saw this play years ago and was deeply moved by it. Reading it brought it all back. Powerful. And thought provoking
September 7, 2024
Read this to help me prep working on the new Opera that is based on the play. A great look a the personal complications with military service and the overall implications of the surveillance state.
January 13, 2022
Loved the play and as I'm reading it for A-level, I'm loving finding out more about the themes and what went on around this time.
May 17, 2026
“I feel my pulse quicken Ridiculous I’m sweating my pits my hands I’m not there I can’t be killed the threat of death has been removed there is no danger to me none I am the eye in the sky there is no danger but my pulse quickens why does it quicken I am not in combat if combat is risk if combat is danger if combat is combat I am not in it But my pulse quickens It is not a fair fight But it quickens.”
I saw an interview with the winner of Beast Games 2 (don’t ask!) who said he was an Air Force pilot. The interviewer asked him what kind of planes he flew, and he replied that he flew drones. My first reaction was, “He’s not really a pilot!” Then I remembered I didn’t really have enough knowledge to have an opinion, and I thought of Grounded by George Brant, a play I read last April.
In the play, The Pilot, a female Air Force officer, is assigned to the “Chair Force” outside of Las Vegas as a drone pilot after an unplanned pregnancy. Her new husband is thrilled they can be together as a family without long deployments, but The Pilot misses being a real “eye in the sky.” From an air-conditioned trailer, she watched targets in the Middle East—sometimes attacking and killing them—then goes home to kiss her daughter goodnight. Soon, the cognitive dissonance begins to overwhelm her.
About ten years ago, the play was in the news when Anne Hathaway starred in the one-actor show in New York City. I heard about it much later and when I was in the mood to read a play (which sometimes happens!), I picked it up.
The very limited stage directions explain that the play is a conversation between The Pilot and the audience. There’s very little quoted dialogue, and The Pilot’s lines are almost like poetry or rap. If I were going to compare it to a novel in style, it would be those of Elizabeth Alvarez. In theme, it not only in a very compact period reveals gender dynamics in the military but also interrogates the hyper-mechanization of the armed forces and what that does to service men and women. It’s a very interesting read and undoubtedly would be a fascinating play to see performed.
I saw an interview with the winner of Beast Games 2 (don’t ask!) who said he was an Air Force pilot. The interviewer asked him what kind of planes he flew, and he replied that he flew drones. My first reaction was, “He’s not really a pilot!” Then I remembered I didn’t really have enough knowledge to have an opinion, and I thought of Grounded by George Brant, a play I read last April.
In the play, The Pilot, a female Air Force officer, is assigned to the “Chair Force” outside of Las Vegas as a drone pilot after an unplanned pregnancy. Her new husband is thrilled they can be together as a family without long deployments, but The Pilot misses being a real “eye in the sky.” From an air-conditioned trailer, she watched targets in the Middle East—sometimes attacking and killing them—then goes home to kiss her daughter goodnight. Soon, the cognitive dissonance begins to overwhelm her.
About ten years ago, the play was in the news when Anne Hathaway starred in the one-actor show in New York City. I heard about it much later and when I was in the mood to read a play (which sometimes happens!), I picked it up.
The very limited stage directions explain that the play is a conversation between The Pilot and the audience. There’s very little quoted dialogue, and The Pilot’s lines are almost like poetry or rap. If I were going to compare it to a novel in style, it would be those of Elizabeth Alvarez. In theme, it not only in a very compact period reveals gender dynamics in the military but also interrogates the hyper-mechanization of the armed forces and what that does to service men and women. It’s a very interesting read and undoubtedly would be a fascinating play to see performed.
June 29, 2025
A family, military, and historical drama all rolled into one. All three will leave a soulful trident mark on your brain when you’re finished. Life details, emotions, and histories floating around in the Pilot's head fly off the page in vivid detail, and even more so if you've seen the show live like me. For a one-person play, it's Krapp's Last Tape level of quality and thoughtfulness. I can't help feel that it's a little melodramatic at times. If the play explored the Pilot's clear PTSD a little bit more rather than creating a fractured psyche out of thin air, I feel like it would have expressed a more complex character and tone. The speech at the end sounds like a less angry/delusional conspiracy theorist line, but it makes sense if we look at the play as an analysis of the complex world of modern technology. But I don't see how that fits in with the emotions, the PTSD, or the odd circumstances the Pilot is in. There are weird disconnects in theme that prevent the play from compelling perfection, but its very compelling at that.
May 19, 2015
Packs a wallop! Strong and terse, like the single character who inhabits this play. I never felt I was reading (watching, in my mind's eye) a one-person play. I felt the presence of many others throughout.
The script concerns a female fighter pilot who finds herself grounded for reasons I won't give away here. She grapples with her new status, even as her personal status changes. Life for her is both enriched and impoverished, as she finds herself enlightened and decompensating at once.
Good for you, Mr. George Brant for writing such a fine stage piece! And thank you.
The script concerns a female fighter pilot who finds herself grounded for reasons I won't give away here. She grapples with her new status, even as her personal status changes. Life for her is both enriched and impoverished, as she finds herself enlightened and decompensating at once.
Good for you, Mr. George Brant for writing such a fine stage piece! And thank you.
June 30, 2016
Powerful, unusual, relevant, a personal narrative of military experience that builds and builds to an explosive psychological conclusion.
Sparse with very little punctuation, wide open. Would love to see it performed. A great example of a single-person play, dynamic and compelling. Tragic, individual, modern war story.
Sparse with very little punctuation, wide open. Would love to see it performed. A great example of a single-person play, dynamic and compelling. Tragic, individual, modern war story.
November 1, 2015
Heart-wrenching and topical play about a woman drone pilot and her court martial for refusing to take out a terrorist leader while a child was in the vicinity.
April 15, 2015
Short verse told story about an American fighter Pilot who comes back from her pregnancy to a world of combat where drones have overtaken air combat. Interesting and contemporary read.
March 1, 2016
An extremely accomplished one person play. The build to the brilliant end is magnificent. An important play.
December 5, 2015
This was so good!!
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews