Wild blue yonder: Theaterwork’s Grounded

The thrill of being a pilot in wartime is what attracts some people to the military. They crave the wide-open skies — and the targets. War might be hell, but it makes you tough. In Grounded, a one-woman show written by George Brandt, a pregnant Air Force pilot has been taken out of the air and sent to a base in Nevada to fly drones over a war zone from the safety of a computer screen as a member of the “Chair Force,” killing enemy soldiers and civilians from thousands of miles away. The play explores themes of modern warfare, in which a soldier makes remote kills by day and goes home to her family at night. Grounded, a production of Theaterwork directed by David Matthew Olson and starring Vanessa Rios y Valles, opens at 7 p.m. on Friday, May 22, at the Lannan Foundation Meeting House (319 Read St.). Additional performances are Saturday, May 23, at 7 p.m. and Sunday, May 24, at 2 p.m. Tickets, which are $15, are available at the door; call 505-471-1799 for reservations. — Jennifer Levin