Grounded

Alicia Lyn Hunt, as The Pilot, exudes confidence and pride that she is an Air Force “top gun” in a profession which does not welcome women easily, in the play Grounded, by George Brant, now playing as part of the B Street Theater’s B3 season. The Pilot is accepted as one of the guys. They go up in their planes, hit their targets and then go to the local bar to drink together—the camaraderie of soldiers in a war. Then she meets Eric, that rare man who can accept her job, which intimidates most men. They begin a relationship and when she become pregnant, the Air Force grounds her, assigning her to desk duty, or the “chair force,” as she calls it.

When baby Samantha is 3, the Pilot misses her old job and wants it back. She is assigned, instead, to a drone group, where she takes her daughter to school in the morning, then sits in an air conditioned trailer on the Nevada desert watching “bad guys” on the ground in the Middle East, blows them up and is home in time to put Samantha to bed at night.

This gripping one-woman tour de force, directed by Lyndsay Burch, explores in intricate detail the effects on the bomber of our modern war, where the pilot is never in danger, the camera provides too close a look at the body parts of the victims as they explode and where there is no way to unwind at the end of the day, and no way to share anything with family because of security reasons.

Hunt is masterful as The Pilot, slowly succumbing to the mental pressures. She gives a performance that will long be remembered. There are talk-back sessions after many performances.