Grounded at Royal Exchange Manchester

Beckie Darlington presents the Gate Theatre's production

GROUNDED

By George Brant

Directed by Christopher Haydon

 

The Studio at the Royal Exchange Theatre

St Ann’s Square, Manchester

Tuesday 4 November – Saturday 8 November

 

George Brandt’s gripping and compulsive new play GROUNDED – which targets our assumptions about war, family, and what it is to be a woman – arrives in The Studio at Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre from Tuesday 4 November to Saturday 8 November as part of a national tour.

 

Lucy Ellinson (* see Notes for Editors) plays the central character, a hot-rod F16 fighter pilot. She’s pregnant and her career in the sky is over. Now she sits in an air-conditioned trailer in Las Vegas flying remote-controlled drones over the Middle East.

 

She struggles through surreal 12-hour shifts far from the battlefield, hunting terrorists by day and being a wife and mother by night.

 

A Gate Theatre production presented by independent producer Beckie Darlington, the play is directed by The Gate’s Artistic Director Christopher Gayden (* see Notes for Editors). The tour follows sell-out runs at both the Edinburgh Festival and Gate Theatre, and a run at Studio Theatre in Washington DC.

 

He said: “This is one the finest plays I have ever directed. It's an extraordinary, caustic exploration of one of the most important issues of our time and it packs a multitude of ideas in to a single, brilliantly compelling character.

 

“Since opening in Edinburgh last year, it has been hugely exciting to see how thousands of people have connected with it and so I am thrilled at the opportunity to take it on tour and allow it to reach an even wider audience.

 

The creative team is completed by Oliver Townsend (design), Mark Howland (lighting),

Tom Gibbons (sound) and Benjamin Walden (video design). 

 

The production is supported by Arts Council England and the Jerwood Charitable Foundation (Jerwood Young Designers Programme).  

 

For further information, images, or for interview / press review ticket requests, please contact JOHN GOODFELLOW (Press & Communications Manager) on 0161 615 6783 / john.goodfellow@royalexchange.co.uk