In Grounded, a one-woman play by George Brant, a pregnant pilot is reassigned from active combat to handling a drone. Safe in a trailer in the desert, she’s half a world from her targets, but she can see them better, through the drone camera. Her life is shattered, not only because she misses cruising freely through blue skies: Just how do you handle everyday life at home after spending your work day killing people?
Brant’s language is so vivid, his descriptions so detailed, that readers may feel design is almost unnecessary. Turns out, designers say the play, which has been given over 35 productions and counting, is, as sound designer Lindsay Jones puts it, “a designer’s dream. It’s so vivid in so many ways and yet leaves so many possibilities for ideas.”
Should a play about surveillance and military technology be tech-heavy? Or should a character-centered story be less so? The five productions here all used projections, none to create literal locations, but they related to technology in different ways. Check out Part One on the Public Theatre and Part Two on the City Theatre.
As The World Turns: Unicorn Theatre
At the Unicorn Theatre in Kansas City, MO, scenic designer Gary Mosby created an open environment, accessible for light and projection, configuring the flexible space in the round. He says director Cynthia Levin asked for a flight metaphor, so he put runways on either side of an elevated revolve, 12' in diameter; sometimes it turned slowly, sometimes quickly to suggest flight.
Only a table and chair set the stage. “The piece is so narrative and so descriptive, I didn’t want to encumber it with a lot of scenery,” he says. “The pieces we used were to support the actor (Carla Noack), not to tell the story.”
Projection designer Douglas J Macur used both Noack and the floor as projection surfaces. He considered using time lapse footage for a drive through the desert, but that wound up pulling too much focus from the character, so he opted for abstract images throughout.
The pilot entered a dark stage, to the swelling sound of a jet. As the stage lit, spectators saw blue and white clouds. “They moved faster and faster then blurred and settled into a cruising through the sky video,” says Macur, who used color for flying video. Instead of using actual drone footage, he blurred footage from an apache attack helicopter that uses similar camera, changing direction every few sections as a drone might when following its target. A blend of amber and sepia colors as well as white, grey, and black swirled across the stage during desert sequences, evoking blowing sand. When the dialogue became frenetic, the floor would spin faster, with projections of targeting mechanisms (arrows, numbers, dots, green lines) moving at triple the speed of the platform during combat sections. For one dramatic moment, the stage became dark, sound stopped, images froze, and the table stopped suddenly. Noack remained on the deck almost all of the time, except for a graveyard scene where she walked into the first rows of the audience.
Composer/sound designer Greg Mackender “tried to get an open air sound for the desert, not desert sound effects like animals or night sounds,” he says. “Whenever she piloted either a plane or a drone, we used the same unique sound,” which accompanied the rotating of the stage. He used a low droning sound and electronic sounds to create a harsh noise.
Mackender needed to mic Noack because she had her back to one part of the audience whenever she faced another. In the drone, he made her voice sound like it came from a telephone; in other areas, it was more natural.
Alex Perry LD designed lights, Sharon Smith the flight suit.
Stay tuned for coverage of four other productions, including The Gate and American Blues Theatre.
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