Praise for Grounded at the Adelaide Fringe 2020

★★★★★ - "I could go into the storyline, expand on the unique and versatile performance space, expand on the deft and provocative direction and spend another 10 pages looking at the world class performance given by Martha Lott." - Glam Adelaide

★★★★★ - "Martha Lott’s powerful performance as the unnamed pilot is intense, taking the audience high into the heavens and then allowing them to see her heartbreaking fall" - Adelaide Theatre Guide

★★★★★ - "Lott performs a true tour-de-force and it is wonderful to see her back on the stage again"- Entertainment Hive

★★★★"Martha Lott’s portrayal of a jet fighter pilot who’s reassigned after an unplanned pregnancy is astounding. At no point during the performance did I remember that I was in a theatre and the person standing on stage was an actor." - Everything Theatre

★★★★"it’s Martha Lott’s brazen performance that steals the show"- FEST Mag

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After a stellar 2019 season, the award-winning Grounded is back at HST!

If your life is spent up in the sky, what happens when you're forced to plant your feet back on the ground?

From the award-winning playwright of Elephant's Graveyard, George Brant, comes the story of an ace fighter pilot whose career in the sky is ended early due to an unexpected pregnancy. Reassigned to operate military drones from a windowless trailer outside Las Vegas, she hunts terrorists by day and returns to family by night. As the pressure to track a high-profile target grows, the boundaries begin to blur between the desert in which she lives and the one she patrols half a world away.

Grounded was short-listed for the James Tait Black Prize for Drama & the Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Award.

Martha Lott is directed by Poppy Rowley in a riveting, incredibly evocative, and blisteringly sharp iteration of this multi-award-winning play.

Awards for Grounded at the Adelaide Fringe 2019

WINNER - ADELAIDE CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD

WINNER - GRAHAM F. SMITH PEACE FOUNDATION PRIZE

WINNER - SUNDAY MAIL BEST FEMALE SOLO SHOW

WINNER- ADVERTISER ART IMITATES LIFE AWARD

Praise for Grounded at the Adelaide Fringe 2019

★★★★★ - "Martha Lott is a very special performer ... she left me laughing and smiling in admiration of her character, and threw goosebumps down my spine with the emotive ending to the production" - Eventalaide

★★★★★- "One strength of this play is in the tight script, but Martha Lott uses that script to create a powerful and moving story" - 5MBS

★★★★★ - "Mesmerised from start to finish … Grounded is a Fringe must!" - Global Media Post

★★★★★ - "Hot tip. This is going to be one of the must-see shows of Fringe 2019" - The Barefoot Review

★★★★★ - "Hard to imagine any way of improving this piece of theatre" - The Adelaide Show

★★★★★ - "Martha Lott gives an incredible performance... This piece is heartbreaking, emotional and very well told."- GLAM Adelaide

★★★★★ - "Lott performs a true tour-de-force and it is wonderful to see her back on the stage" - Entertainment Hive

★★★★ 1/2 - "Lott is compelling, engaging ... A gripping and powerful piece of theatre that is beautifully performed, directed and produced." - The Advertiser

★★★★ 1/2 - "Martha Lott delivers an intense and fluid performance ... a sobering and riveting play" - The Clothesline

★★★★ 1/2 "Grounded is [Martha Lott's] profoundly moving, stunning stage return... Not to be missed." - Arts Garden

★★★★ - "Lott expressed these intricacies delicately, powerfully." - Great Scott

"I can't speak any higher of how captivating Martha's performance was, so much so that she received a standing ovation" - All Over Adelaide

"Lott is mesmerizing. Her layered performance is a triumph, as is this tale of modern-warfare." - Stage Whispers

"Martha Lott’s performance is commanding and complex" - Adelaide Theatre Guide

"It is a skilled actress who can pull this off and Lott is certainly that."- Theatre Travels

Accolades for Grounded by George Brant

The Smith Prize for Political Theatre
Scotsman Fringe First Award - Edinburgh Festival Fringe
Off-West-End Theatre Award for Best Production of 2013
Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Show
Shortlisted for the Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Award
Shortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize For Drama
NNPN Rolling World Premiere
Arizona Daily Star Mac Award for Best Drama
Top 10 Play in London - The Guardian
Top 10 Play in London - The London Evening Standard

Read More About Grounded by George Brant

"GROUNDED: Contemporary Theatre at Its Best" - Rebecca Schlossberg

Grounded by George Brant was first produced in a rolling World Premiere by SF Playhouse (California, USA), Borderlands Theatre (Arizona, USA), and Unicorn Theatre (Missouri, USA) as part of the National Play Network's Continued Life program.

The New York premiere of Grounded by George Brant was produced by Page 73 Productions (Liz Jones and Asher Richelli (Executive Directors); Michael Walkup (Associate Director).

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Cast & Crew

Martha Lott - Actor

Martha started acting when she was eight years old. She studied at Drama Centre London and returned to Australia where she worked in Sydney and Adelaide. She founded and runs Holden Street Theatres. She is an award winning Director, Producer and Actress as well as a published playwright but her heart in still in Acting. Some of her favourite experiences were King Lear, Death of A Salesman, Trojan Women (State Theatre Co SA), Anzac Girls, The Lost Tools of Henry Hole, Changed Forever and the remake of Storm Boy, creating and performing in Shakespeare For Kids over the last four years and her time on air with the ABC Radio. Her producing endeavors have resulted in multiple awards during the Adelaide Fringe and Holden Street Theatres being recognised globally.

Poppy Rowley - Director

Poppy was Artistic Associate for Eastern Angles 2015-2017, she did the NT Directors course September 2017 and the Clore Emerging Leaders course in March 2017, she graduated from the MFA Theatre Directing, Birkbeck, in 2014.

Previous directing credits include: Pramkicker (Melbourne Meat Market); All Wrapped Up In Westwood, The Trials of Mary, The Fletton Railway Children, Future Floodlands, Nativity Blues (Eastern Angles); A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant and A Prayer (Bread & Roses), The Game (St James Theatre); Only Forever (Hope Theatre); Century, and Fings Wot I Did (Sheffield Theatres).

Assisting credits include: Amy Hodge (Headlong/Bush Theatre), Gemma Fairlie (Lyric, Hammersmith), Theresa Heskins (New Vic Theatre), Daniel Evans, Jonathan Watkins, and Mark Rosenblatt (Sheffield Theatres)

Kate Prescott - Production Design

Nick Ely - Graphic Design

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George Brant - Writer

George Brant’s plays include Grounded, Marie and Rosetta, Into the Breeches!, Elephant’s Graveyard, The Prince of Providence, Dark Room, Grizzly Mama, Good on Paper, The Mourners’ Bench, Salvage, Three Voyages of the Lobotomobile, Any Other Name, Defiant, Miracle: A Tragedy, Ashes, NOK, The Lonesome Hoboes, All Talk, One Hand Clapping, The Royal Historian of Oz, Lovely Letters, Three Men in a Boat, Borglum! The Mount Rushmore Musical, Tights on a Wire and Night of the Mime.

Brant's work has been produced internationally by such companies as the Public Theater, The Atlantic Theater Company, Trinity Repertory Company, Cleveland Play House, The Alley Theatre, Studio Theatre, Milwaukee Repertory, City Theatre, Gate Theatre of London, Page 73, Traverse Theatre, Dobama Theatre, and the Disney Channel, among others.

His plays have been generously developed by the Metropolitan Opera, The Playwrights' Center, Asolo Rep, McCarter Theatre Center, New Harmony Project, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, WordBRIDGE Playwright’s Lab, InterAct Theatre, Theatre @ Boston Court, Playwright and Director Center of Moscow, Florida Studio Theatre, Contemporary Drama Festival of Hungary, the Hangar Theatre, and Equity Library Theatre, among others.

His scripts have been awarded a Lucille Lortel Award, an Edgerton Foundation New Play Award, a Scotsman Fringe First Award, an Off-West End Theatre Award for Best Production, an NNPN Rolling World Premiere, the Smith Prize, the Keene Prize for Literature, a Theatre Netto Festival Prize, a Creative Workforce Fellowship, the David Mark Cohen National Playwriting Award from the Kennedy Center and three Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Awards. He has received writing fellowships from the James A. Michener Center for Writers, the McCarter Theatre Sallie B. Goodman Artist's Retreat, the MacDowell Colony, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, the Hermitage Artists' Retreat and the Blue Mountain Center as well as commissions from the Metropolitan Opera, Trinity Repertory Company, Cleveland Play House, Dobama Theatre and Theatre 4.

George received his MFA in Writing from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin and is a member of the Dramatists Guild. He is published by Samuel French, Oberon Books, Fisher Verlage and Smith & Kraus.