The story of a drone pilot in search of "the blue"
The Milwaukee Rep has a knack for bringing timely, thought-provoking, and dialogue-starting stories to the stage. Grounded, playing now through April 2nd in the Stiemke Studio, is no exception. It’s a one-woman show, starring the incredible Jessie Fisher, and tells the story of an ace fighter pilot who’s career is grounded following an unexpected pregnancy. When she’s back and ready for duty, our pilot is relegated to the “chair force” — flying drones and dropping bombs in Afghanistan from the comfort of a trailer in Las Vegas.
Drone warfare is something I personally haven’t given much thought — what the reality of it entails or what it means for those doing the fighting. At its very base level, Grounded certainly opened my eyes to modern warfare and how technology is both friend and foe. Although there’s half a world between our drone pilots and their targets, high-tech cameras mean you can actually make out figures and features, so the attack might, strangely, feel even more personal.
On the flip side, you could argue that this technology allows our fighters to be more disconnected. Targets are just shapes on a screen, and at the end of a long day, our grounded troops are able to go home to their families and enjoy some semblance of normalcy.
But as we see in Grounded, that normalcy can unravel you. Our pilot grapples with the dichotomy of targeting terrorists by day and tucking her daughter into bed at night. When she was up in the sky, she was able to get lost in “the blue” — something she loves and longs for, now that her world is a grey trailer in the Las Vegas desert and not the exhilarating, endless sky.
Of course our Grounded pilot took great pride in flying and fighting for our nation as an airborne assailant, but it was her love of the blue kept her going day in and day out. Take that blue away from her, and eventually we find that shooting bad guys on a screen will drive you mad. It was the blue that inspired our pilot and, seemingly, maintained her sanity.
Grounded’s 75-minute run time is manned solely by Jessie Fisher. There’s no intermission, but you won’t miss it. Fisher’s performance is so absorbing, starting off conversational, likable, relatable, and often laugh-out-loud funny — eventually taking us to the edge of our seat. As we see her descend in a tailspin of neurotic doubt, panic, and fear, Fisher seamlessly invites us along for the ride.
It’s such performances that allow an already-remarkable play to realize its full potential, for really everything rides on that one actor. Grounded is worth a trip even for Fisher alone. Her character's fate aside, Fisher takes us out of the grey and into the blue, and that is an exhilarating experience.
*Photos by Michael Brosilow
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