Tacoma Arts Live’s
Professional Regional Theater Production
GROUNDED –
Powerful Show Speaks
to Female Service Members
in Pierce County,
Home to 86,000 Veterans
Eight Shows at Theatre on the Square
February 17 – March 6
MEDIA CONTACT:
Lacey Wright, Associate Executive Director | laceyw@tacomaartslive.org | 253.376.1570
SPONSORS: ARTSFund, National Endowment for the Arts, Tacoma Creates, Theater Angels, Washington State Arts Commission, and Wells Fargo
TACOMA, WASH.— Tacoma Arts Live’s Regional Theater Program’s production’s powerful one-woman show speaks to female service members in Pierce County, which is home to 86,000 Veterans. GROUNDED by George Brant will open for a preview night on Thursday, February 17 at 7:30 p.m., plus seven additional performances between February 18 – March 6 at Tacoma’s Theater on the Square. This play is an example of theater which can be moving, edgy, and thought-provoking, while maintaining a safe and supportive environment. Tickets start at $19 and are on sale now.
GROUNDED seamlessly blends the personal and the professional in the story of a female Air Force pilot whose career in the sky ends after she becomes pregnant with her first child. When she returns to active duty, she is reassigned to operate military drones from a windowless trailer outside Las Vegas and she must learn to navigate the intersection of wartime and home life. By day she hunts terrorists and then returns to her family each night. As the pressure to track a high-profile target mounts, the boundaries begin to blur between the desert in which she lives and the one she patrols half a world away. A tour de force one-woman play, GROUNDED soars from the heights of lyricism to the shallows of workaday existence, targeting our assumptions about war and family through the power of storytelling.
GROUNDED will be performed by Samantha Chung in her acting debut with Tacoma Arts Live on the cusp of Black History and Women’s History Months. She is a graduate of the Guildford School of Acting, University of Surrey, an actor, and theatre maker with a current focus on learning more about anti-racist and trauma-informed artistic practices. Chung is the founder and visionary behind empathos company, an independent theatre company based in Tacoma. Chung’s anti-racist ethos is to center historically excluded people, specifically Global Majority folx, with projects that dismantle what has been the accepted narrative of the United States.
The Pacific Northwest professional cast and crew includes:
ARTISTIC TEAM:
- Samantha Chung (she/her), Pilot
- Brett Carr, Director
- Eric Clausell, Associate Director
- Serena Berry, Stage Manager
- Monique Otter-Johnson, Assistant Stage Manager
- Jeanette Sanchez-Izenman, Intimacy Choreographer
PRODUCTION TEAM:
- Lex Marcos, Scenic Design
- Matthew Lawrence, Lighting and Visual Design
- Ryan Coleman, Sound Design
- Kim Izenman, Charge Artist
- Chris Berryman, Lead Carpenter
TACOMA ARTS LIVE TEAM:
- Amanda Rae, Company Manager
- Nick Shellman, Assistant Director of Operations
- Brett Carr, Co-Producing Artistic Director
- David Fischer, Co-Producing Artistic Director
GROUNDED won the National New Play Network’s 2012 Smith Prize, which honors a new play on American politics and also a Fringe First award at the 2013 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
George Brant is a native of Illinois and a graduate of Northwestern University. His plays include Grounded, Elephant’s Graveyard, Marie and Rosetta, Grizzly Mama, Good on Paper, The Mourners’ Bench, Salvage, Three Voyages of the Lobotomobile, Any Other Name, Defiant, Dark Room, 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.
Tacoma Arts Live’s Professional Regional Theater Program intends to produce a season of great plays with a conscience, engage empathy, challenge complacency, and inspire audiences to live in thoughtful inquiry. Each play is carefully chosen with the support of the Theater Angels and Theater Cohorts group.
Tickets to GROUNDED are $19, $29, and $39 and are on sale now. To purchase tickets, call Tacoma Arts Live Box Office at 253.346.1721, visit in person at Tacoma Armory – 1001 S Yakima Ave., or online at www.TacomaArtsLive.org.
GROUNDED is presented by arrangement with Concord Theatricals on behalf of Samuel French, Inc.
Arguably one of mankind’s greatest artistic achievements, Michelangelo’s frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome are timeless masterpieces. Whether you have seen them in person or not, Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel: The Exhibition will allow you to immerse yourself in the art from a new perspective in an innovative and unique way.
