GROUNDED by George Brant

I live in Michigan now but I grew up in the Chicagoland area. I actually started out as an actor and did some writing in college, but mostly with acting as the focus. And when I graduated college, I wasn't getting the roles that I wanted. And so I was like, “oh, I could write the roles that I want.” So, the first few plays that I wrote were pretty much for myself and to showcase my own acting. And then things went from there and over time I phased myself out of the acting over time. They were mostly comedies when I started out. I don't know what happened, but over time, it does seem that the dramas are outweighing the comedies, although I would love to do more comedies because they definitely put you in a better mood. 

Because of my background as an actor, my primary goal is to write great parts for people. That was certainly true for GROUNDED. I think part of the fun was to write a role that was really meaty and juicy for somebody and to give them a showcase that maybe they wouldn't otherwise get to do. A lot of the women who've played this part say they are usually not asked to be this aggressive persona that the pilot is. Another play of mine, Into The Breeches! is a World War II comedy in which the women take over the theatre because the men are away and they end up doing Shakespeare’s iconic male roles. And, again, in this I was trying to give roles to people that are fun.

I probably started out with more male leads in my plays and then over time it has switched over. I think with GROUNDED, in particular, there was a feeling that we've seen war through the male persona for thousands of years, and we have all these stories from that perspective. Marrying a female soldier, which is a newer phenomenon, with this new technology seemed like an exciting combination.

A lot of it is definitely research: reading lots of interviews with female pilots and trying to get into that headspace. In one interview, the pilot says that she is not trying to be a guy but that the pilot is basically its own gender, in her eyes. And that was really intriguing to me and acted as my thesis statements as I was writing. The acting background also helps: you have to be pretty open as an actor, and you have to be very empathetic to figure out how to be somebody else. Having to feel as if I'd be able to play the part opens up one's receptors and one's empathetic feelings and you try to get inside the skin of whoever you're portraying as best you can.

I was very curious about drones when we first started hearing about them. I wrote the first draft of this in 2011, back when it was still considered a top secret programme and there was not much information out there. But the more they kept getting used in combat, the more I was curious; what are these things and how do they operate? I couldn't quite figure out a way into the subject matter until I started reading about the PTSD that pilots were unexpectedly facing. The whole project was being sold to us in America as: here's the best of all worlds; we're not putting any of our pilots in danger and these weapons are the most precise that we've ever had. And that all sounded great, but then I started to read articles about the unexpected mental strain this was putting on pilots and, indeed, that the UAV pilots were experiencing PTSD at the same rate as traditional pilots. I had no idea at the time that drones could be flown from here in the States overseas. I assumed they were flown from the country they were operating in. And that really blew my mind. That idea of that kind of disassociation and yet connection with something that's thousands of miles away. And is combat even fair if you're thousands miles away from your target? And then the last thing that intrigued me was this idea that because they're flown from here in the States, and there's not really a need for barracks, so these pilots could actually go home at night; this was a whole other way of fighting war. That seemed to me a really rich area to explore; this idea that you potentially could have killed enemy targets during the day and then go home to your family.

It depends on what is going on in the world at that moment. Sometimes different elements of the plays will highlight themselves a little more depending on current events. But when I wrote it, it almost felt like a science fiction play and some of the things seem less science fiction-y now. 

There have been some directors, for example, who are most drawn to the surveillance aspects of the play; this idea that we're being seen, we are so surveilled in our day-to-day lives. And I think that creepy feeling that you're being watched all the time is one that sometimes can stand out. Certainly in the past 10 years there have only been more cameras and more of that all around us. I think the surveillance aspect that's only grown. 

And then the ubiquity of these drones has certainly increased. And now we have different kinds of drones: suicide drones, naval drones, insect-sized surveillance drones.I mean, it's really trippy how much the technology has progressed. But I think that only highlights the concerns of the play. 

Certainly, the aspect of work-life balance that we all try to achieve has also grown in significance. Unfortunately, our pilot is undergoing probably the worst example of how to maintain that. And that struggle is something that we're always going to feel: how much time can you devote to your family and when you have a demanding job? She's in a worst case scenario of that. And how you feel fulfilled in what you do and how much of that is what you do and how much is your family. I think these are certain concerns that have more eternal qualities.

It's been about 10 years in the making. Pretty soon after the play debuted in New York, I was contacted by the Metropolitan Opera. Then there was a little matchmaking period and Janine Tatsori and I met and had dinner a few times and chatted about it and she decided she wanted to take it on. And we took it from there. It was quite a challenge to expand this so much from what is a one person play into a very big canvas opera. We spent a lot of time in the Met staring at this empty stage and figuring out how to fill it. We even had one of the actresses who played the part before donate her time and read about 20 minutes of the play from the Met stage. Janine really wanted to hear what it sounded like in that space and what it looked like for one person to be up there. And then we just dreamed big. The challenge was to hold the focus on her while at the same time, you can only ask so much vocally of one person. So figuring out how to give her at least some breaks within this sprawling piece. It's now a very choral piece. This is my first libretto and my first opera experience behind the scenes so it's gonna be really interesting to see how this all works.

[GROUNDED the opera opened on 28 October 2023.]