“Grounded,” GreenHouse Theatre Project’s first in-person performance since September 2019, displays the “video-gamifying of war,” said the play’s director, David Wilson.
The play is a one-woman show about a fighter pilot and begins with a high-energy recounting of flying F-16 aircraft in the wide-open blue. Elizabeth Braaten Palmieri, in the role of the Pilot, stands against a glowing projection of a cloud-dotted sky while around her — in the outdoor theater space created in the Arcade District, between train tracks and College Avenue — daylight fades in a gradient from orange to gray-violet.
This initial thrill at the beginning of the show peels away as the narrative explores darker aspects of U.S. military service and the devastating consequences of drone warfare.