'Blind Runner' review — new play sprints through themes of protest and freedom
Read our review of Blind Runner, a play written and directed by Amir Reza Koohestani and performed at St. Ann's Warehouse in Farsi with English supertitles.
Playwright-director Amir Reza Koohestani’s Blind Runner, presented by Mehr Theatre Group, asks how far you have to run to liberate yourself. Does it matter how many miles if you don’t win? How much can adrenaline be a tool of liberation? Those are a few questions to help interpret the play, Koohestani’s media-hybrid two-hander playing at St. Ann’s Warehouse.
On dark, sparing scenery, camera setups, and video projection (by Video Yasi Moradi and Benjamin Krieg), the play opens with a playful riff on the concept of “based on a true story,” with the actors writing on chalkboards and switching up the meaning into “actual reality” or “fiction,” tapping into the political and personal ideas that inspired Blind Runner.
Blind Runner hones its surveillance-like gaze on an Iranian couple (Ainaz Azarhoush and Mohammad Reza Hosseinzadeh) trapped by their institution. A Wife is imprisoned for her activism, while her Husband visits her. Both deal with helplessness to different degrees. In a literal, physical sense, Soyer’s lighting locks its two players in box-shapes, suggesting the prison they can’t outrun. There’s a deep longing to penetrate the air of isolation.
Can you outrun the greater institutional forces? The play’s chilling, noise-churning conclusion may appear fatalistic, but Blind Runner insists the perilous journey is necessary.
Blind Runner summary
A marriage is put to the test when an imprisoned Iranian activist tries to connect to her visiting husband. Through their bickering, she convinces him to become the guide to a blind marathon runner, Parissa (also Azarhoush), who lost her eyesight in the brutality of a protest. The stakes are tough and seem insurmountable. Their training culminates with a dangerous challenge: He and Parissa must run through the Channel Tunnel from France to the United Kingdom for 38 kilometers. If they don’t make it on time, a scheduled train will hit them.
Blind Runner is a part of the Under the Radar theatre festival of innovative, global work. The play previously had its world premiere in May 2023 at the Kunsten Festival des Arts in Brussel.
What to expect at Blind Runner
Running 60 minutes without intermission, Blind Runner is performed in Farsi with English supertitles. Upon its bare-bones stage, the two actors are shown on camera feeds. Rarely do the actors share the same camera frame, while the projection merges their livefeeds to elicit the illusion of unified spatiality, despite their separation. The concepts round out into interesting poetic shapes, such as the visual of a runner folded into her coach’s image like a rising flame.
The program is inspired by Niloofar Hamedi, an imprisoned Iranian journalist who utilized running in the prison yard as an act of protest. “To this day, numerous runners have run for Niloofar's liberation in different marathons,” a program note reads.
What audiences are saying about Blind Runner
Audiences and critics alike have weighed in on Blind Runner across various platforms.
- “This was a pretty good show. It was very very short — I felt like I had just sat down and then, boom it was over. The ending was implied so you get to draw your own conclusions.” - Mezzanine user Stephen Kearley
- Michael Billington reviewed the show's world premiere in The Guardian as “mesmerizing”. He wrote, “What impressed me most was Koohestani’s classic ability to interweave the personal and the political.”
- “As an Iranian, I was deeply moved to see the story of ordinary Iranians — people like my own —brought to life on a New York stage, capturing the universal struggle for freedom with such poetic minimalism.” - My +1 at the show
Read more audience reviews of Blind Runner on Show-Score.
Who should see Blind Runner
- Blind Runner interrogates the theme of the “model migrant,” so it warrants interest from those studying immigration and refugee themes.
- Audience of Mehr Theatre Group would like to see works by playwright by Amir Reza Koohestani.
- Blind Runner can be a gateway into studying Iranian current events.
- Sport buffs may like to experience an unorthodox lens on running and its relationship to protest politics.
- Those interested in experimental theatre will be curious to observe how Koohestani plays with the intimacy and imprisonment of the camera lens.
Learn more about Blind Runner off Broadway
Amir Reza Koohestani’s minimalist Blind Runner is a compelling entry to Under the Radar. When running becomes an act of protest and connection, the play finds the poetry in its visuals.
Photo credit: Blind Runner off Broadway. (Photos by Amir Hamja)
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