By Samuel L. Leiter
Iranian plays, understandably, are very rare in the West, so Blind Runner, written and directed by Amir Reza Koohestani, and now at St. Ann’s Warehouse, in Dumbo, is something of an event. As might be expected, given the world’s perception of Iran, the play is political in nature, although more in a metaphorical than literal way. It is touring to various international festivals and is being given here as part of New York’s Under the Radar activities.
Blind Runner is a two-hander staged in minimalist style on a mostly bare stage, supplemented by projections that outline acting spaces on the floor and present live video images of the actors on an upstage screen (credit: Yasi Moradi, Benjamin Krieg). It is spoken in Farsi and uses English surtitles.
Most of it takes place in an Iranian prison where an unnamed young woman (Ainaz Azarhoush) is incarcerated for an unspecified political crime. Her character is inspired, however, by Iranian female journalist, Niloofar Hamedi, mentioned by Koohestani in his program note, who has been imprisoned without trial since 2022 after reporting on the death of Mahsa Amini at the hands of the Morality Police. The woman in the play, like Hamedi, is a marathon runner.
In a sort of prologue, each actor goes to a side wall and writes in chalk a brief introduction to the play, one in English and one in Farsi, but they keep revising what they’ve written to reflect the play’s indeterminate nature as truth or fiction, story or history. It is, obviously, a fictional account of a truthful situation. That situation is crafted into a taut little drama in which the prisoner’s husband (Mohammed Reza Hosseinzadeh), also a runner (like Amini’s husband), campaigns for her release while visiting her weekly, conversing with her across an unseen barrier.
Their conversation must be circumspect because, as they talk, they are being listened to by microphones and watched by cameras. This, of course, strains their relationship even further, and they bicker about minor issues; at one point, although the husband tries to be as supportive as the circumstances will allow, the woman asks him not to come the next week.
Through much of their interchanges, the actors, themselves runners, race backward and forward across the stage, a difficult feat given that they must also be having a conversation. The woman, dashing along a prison corridor, finds in running a liberation from the confinement of prison life, and running thus becomes a metaphor for freedom.
This is taken further when the woman asks her husband to become the guide runner for Parissa (also played by Azarhoush), a blind Iranian paralympic champion marathoner who is training for a race in Paris. She was shot in the eyes for her political protests in Iran. Parissa, who finds running a way to communicate with the world, also uses it to find freedom. She trains with the husband until they find their common rhythm, as they will be tied to each other during the event. The relationship thus deepens, perhaps more than the wife intended. Nevertheless, it reflects Koohestani’s aim to establish that you cannot be free alone, but must share it as a collective experience.
Parissa and the husband agree to undertake another trial. Intent on protesting Britain’s pending legislation to shut down illegal immigration, she plans to draw attention by running through the Channel Tunnel, the 38-kilometer express train route joining England and France. It must be done in under five hours and 35 minutes to beat the morning train. This challenge opens the play to the question of what lengths people will endure to seek freedom from unendurable conditions. What could be more timely? Parissa’s choice, even with her ability, is not much different from that of other oppressed people seeking liberty by boarding leaking boats or undergoing any other of the frightening things countless people do to flee from political or physical danger and poverty.
As they stand before a large projection of the tunnel, pondering their fate, we are suddenly gobsmacked by a powerful dramatic moment. The play ends and the audience waits several moments before realizing it is over.
Blind Runner is acted with quiet, low-keyed intensity, the actors rarely raising their voices. Despite their proximity, their gaze is elsewhere than on each other. This, together with long pauses, creates a cool, distanced effect that tamps down any overly histrionic undercurrents. Instead, the emotional temperature is modulated by the ominously lowkey, thrumming, heartbeat-like music by Phillip Howenwarter and Matthias Foghani.
Both Azarhoush and Hosseinzadeh are excellent in their restrained yet focused performances, but it can be difficult to follow their conversations by trying to watch them and read the surtitles at the same time. On several occasions of rapid back and forth I was confused as to which person had said what. Nevertheless, Blind Runner is often an engrossing work of political theatre that is general enough to represent conditions in any repressive regime. And it is served well by its brief running time.
Blind Runner is playing at St. Ann’s Warehouse, 45 Water Street, Brooklyn, Through January 24. More info: Blind Runner
Photos by Amir Hamja
