Grounded

At the website of Teater Innlandet the following, among other things, is written about Grounded:

"Grounded is a topical play about the human and moral costs of war by drones. How is a person affected by working 12-hour shifts in a bunker in the Nevada desert, hunting for people on the other half of the globe, before going home to her husband and child?

George Brant's prize-awarded play, with the original title Grounded (the production's Norwegian title is Rekyl, meaning Recoil, Sceneweb's comment) has been performed more than 60 places all over the world since the world premiere in 2013. In New York the play has been staged at The Public Theater with Anne Hathaway in the leading role."

The Hedda Jury gave the following reason for the best audiovisual design award to Ove Alexander Jamt Dahl, Morten Halle, Christine Lohre and Olav Nordhagen:

"When theatre is at its best, the singular elements flow together into a whole. Then, we get to experience that just this play had to be conveyed just like this, just now. This year's winner in the category of best audiovisual design is small in format, but great in artistic skill. In close collaboration with the other elements of the performance, the stage design, video and sound design create images both suggesting and expanding the understanding of the material. Music and sound design become part of a whole in which drama and tenderness, sense of adventure and longing find their expressions without overdoing the effects."

SOURCES:

The National Library of Norway, production posters, transferred to Sceneweb 19.04.2017

Teater Innlandet, www.teaterinnlandet.no, 02.06.2016, http://www.teaterinnlandet.no/rekyl

The Hedda Award, heddaprisen.no, 19.06.2017, https://www.heddaprisen.no/vinnere/2017

The Hedda Award, www.heddaprisen.no, https://www.heddaprisen.no/nominerte/2017

Norwegian Critics' Association, www.kritikerlaget.no, 26.08.17, http://kritikerlaget.no/saker/de-nominerte-til-kritikerprisene-for-teater-musikk-og-dans-1202

Lillian Bikset, Den upersonlige krigen blir personliggjort i Rekyl (literally: The impersonal war is made personal in Grounded), Dagbladet September 12 2016:

"The pilot, nameless, is played by Line Heie Hallem. Precisely she steers her through her growing inner conflicts. Initially, she shows off a woman who is driven by her need for excitement. Tough, strong, arrogant, with a physically felt delight from the kick her flying provides her with, sure in her own authority - the authority stated in her by her position. A direct speaker, brash and confronting she finds identity in her uniform. She is proud to be one of the chosen, the military elite. She is competent, and she knows it. In the air, she has courage. But gradually, worn down by the routine of the many hours in front of the screen, of the close-up pictures of the victims, doubt and trauma grow in her. (...) The text is built around pairs of opposites. Physical experiences versus physical distance, to give life versus to take life, technology versus humanity. Brant is conscious of his images, he underlines them in form of repetition, and Ove Alexander Jamt Dahl's video design makes them concrete. The colours: The blue of the sky, the pink of the daughter, the grey of the drone images. To see: The camera eye and the human eye, similarities between the ultrasound photo and the surveillance photos of the desert. Christine Lohre's stage design, too, can be compared to an eye. In the centre of it, a slanted lens, like a radar screen or an iris. It is surrounded by the audience's chairs, placed in the form of the lower contour of an eye."

• The Hedda Award 2017 - Production of the year