Theater review: 'Grounded'

Ah, the busy life of a contemporary working mother. George Brant’s “Grounded” gives you a taste in FST’s current Stage III production. It sure is a juggling act! Dropping the toddler off at preschool; keeping the home fires burning with hubby; and earning a paycheck by sitting down at a videogame-like console, joystick in hand, and sending hunter-killer drones like avenging angels to snuff the lives of high-value human targets on the other side of the planet.

That sounds like a work of darkly satiric cyberpunk fiction. But the time is the recent past. Mom’s job description is as real as it gets. And no joke.

This play tells her story — and it terrifies me. Probably not for the reasons the playwright intended.

It’s a one-woman show. Rachel Moulton plays the nameless aviator. She starts out flying an F-16, a female top gun with a soft spot for AC-DC. (Referring here to Brian Johnson’s heavy mental band.) As the spaceship Serenity flies into the black of space, she flies into the blue of the sky. But pregnancy clips her wings. She’s shipped back home. But, weirdly, she stays in the air.

Mindful of her flight skills, the United States military stations her in a non-descript trailer in the Nevada desert. She’s an armchair assassin with a virtual reality interface, courtesy of a high-res video monitor. She’s flying again — the pilot of an Unmanned Arial Vehicle (UAV). Thanks to all that military-grade technology, the drone’s camera becomes an extension of her eyes. She tweaks the drone’s vector with a joystick, and follows SUVs and other targets barreling down Iraq’s dusty desert trails. The prey can run, but the hunters never stop. The kill teams work in shifts at the various stations, day after day, around the clock. They stay on their prospective targets for as long as it takes. And turn them to human hamburger once a target is confirmed.

Brant’s play pulls you into the grounded pilot’s disassociated reality with an incendiary, stream-of-consciousness monolog. This production also shows you that reality. Kill after kill, you see what she sees—the drone’s point-of-view, projected on the wall behind her. (A hellish visual aid by Ryan Finzelber.) She blows a dude behind a rock to pieces? It’s all there.

At the start of her assignment, our earthbound misfit gets an instant high. Killing bad guys left and right is a rush, baby—and it fills her with unholy feelings of God-like power. (The Lord delivers vengeance from on high? She knows exactly how He feels.) Then her job satisfaction takes a nosedive.

A murderous, religious maniac shoots like a bullet to the top of the kill list. He’s designated “No. 2,” and never mentioned by name. The man’s rolling around down there in the Iraqi desert, an American UAV in hot pursuit at all times, right over his head. He’s got an SUV with serious horsepower, four-wheel drive, a very large gas tank, and some variety of the motorman’s friend for the driver’s convenience. Like the roadrunner, No. 2 relentlessly drives over ravines, arroyos and stretches of sand, never stopping, never getting out to reveal his telltale limp and glass eye—and get the instant karma he so richly deserves. Nope.

So, day after day, our aviator and her team stay on No. 2’s tail. And get no results. The smug swine just keeps driving and driving, and it starts to get frustrating. Her initial high turns to tightly wound hysteria—a coiled spring, wound increasingly tighter as she cycles through obsessions. Our fallen angel alternates between “normal” home life and the mission—and they both start to seem like hallucinations. She bounces from manic fantasies to black despair. Soon, she starts to crack. Those cracks keep getting bigger. The blue of the liberating, boundless sky turns to a monitor’s dull grey. She sees the look of grey death on her daughter’s tiny face. She leaves trashy offerings at a desert graveside. From dawn to dusk, she never takes off her totemic flight suit. Her marriage goes to hell. Then everything follows.

Brant’s uncompromising script is beautifully written, and stings like a slap in the face. First he introduces you to a likeable aviator. Then he shows you the death spiral of her damnation.

I get the sense that director Kate Alexander advised Moulton to dive to the darkest pit of her soul—then simply turned her loose. (Although I’m sure her actual direction was far more specific.)

Moulton delivers a powerful, brutal, gut-level, physically demanding performance as this lost soul. Just watching her is a harrowing experience. For the actress herself, it’s probably like taking a beating night after night.

Get the feeling this isn’t a happy-happy play? You’re right.

War is hell. This uniquely hellish form of warfare is soul-destroying to those who wage it—and no picnic for those on the receiving end, either. There’s something craven and heartless about the targeted killings of UAV warfare—all the legions of desk jockey pilots, safely picking off their targets, one-by-one, via remote control. Then clocking out and returning to the comfort of their safe, cozy homes. Aside from the inevitable percentage who crack and never goes home.

Brant makes a fair point, but what’s the alternative? Targeted UAV assassination seems preferable to, say, indiscriminately dropping 3,900 tons of high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices on the city of Dresden. And wiping out 25,000 people in the ensuing firestorm. So what’s the right choice?

Unless you’re a pacifist, the dilemma of war is easily stated: What’s the best way to kill the enemy? How do you do it, without ruining your warriors for normal human life, if at all possible?

It’s a hideous problem. But the logical solution might be worse.

Historically, it tends to work that way.

War, from Babylon to Byzantium, resembled the gory bits of “Game of Thrones”—up-close and personal; messy and very hands-on. The invention of gunpowder sent projectiles through human flesh at increasingly greater velocities and distances. After the chivalrous early dogfights, 20th century air power became impersonal and cold. From a chilly altitude of 32,000 feet, the bombardier lined up that Norden bombsight, pushed a button, and dropped the payload. 44 seconds later, a puff would blossom on the ant city far below. 26 seconds later, the distant sound would rise back up. Bang. The run was done and it was time to fly home. That tidy impersonality made carpet bombing, fire bombing and the deliveries of Fat Man and Little Boy seem as clean as sending a postcard to grandma. The carnage was out of sight and out of mind. Up in the planes, at least.

You might think that UAVs would make death-from-above even more coldly impersonal, but that’s not how it works. Flying a hunter-killer drone is not like playing a videogame. It’s a highly personal kill—one-on-one, just like the bad old days. As “Grounded” fiercely reveals, that drives a fair percentage of decent, normal, armchair aviators nuts. And that’s exactly what worries me.

The obvious solution? Remove the human equation.

Driverless cars are rolling out. Why not driverless drones?

Let’s get America’s fleet of killer robots in the air!

As any cyberpunk writer can tell you, once that happens, we’re all screwed.