Residents of Washington, DC looking for highbrow entertainment will soon be able to see an opera on the home life of a “hot shot” drone operator sponsored by one of the country’s top weapons manufacturers.
According to a recent notice on the theater’s website, ‘Grounded’ will premiere at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in October. The opera, which features music by Jeanine Tesori and is based on a 2013 play by George Brant, follows the narrative of “Jess,” a “hot shot F-16 pilot” who is unable to fly owing to an unexpected pregnancy.
Jess is reassigned to pilot drones in Afghanistan from the comfort of her Las Vegas trailer, where she “tracks terrorists by day and rocks her daughter to sleep by night.” The narrative asks, “What is lost when technology separates us from the horrors of war?” And what cost is imposed on the operator of a lone drone in the sky?” according to the website of the theater.
The opera is sponsored by General Dynamics, the world’s fifth-largest weapons manufacturer. General Dynamics manufactures the F-16 fighter jets that the opera’s fictional heroine pilots, as well as a variety of vehicle-launched attack drones. General Atomics, its former subsidiary, manufactures the MQ-9 Reaper drones, which were widely used in Afghanistan, including in the 2021 strike that killed a family of unarmed civilians in Kabul.
It’s unknown whether the opera will end on an anti-war note, but the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft in Washington, DC, remarked this week that “productions involving arms companies or the Pentagon rarely find much room to critique America’s wars abroad.”
The military-industrial complex in the United States frequently participates in events that showcase its products. Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Pratt & Whitney, and Lockheed Martin all sponsored a party at the Ukrainian embassy in December to commemorate the country’s military. Invitations to the event bore the logos of all four arms manufacturers.
“Ukrainian diplomats should probably think harder about how it looks for them to be throwing parties with the defense contractors who are making bank off of this horrible war,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace fellow Matt Duss told Vox at the time.
