In Amir Reza Koohestani’s Blind Runner, a husband (Mohammad Reza Hosseinzadeh) visits his wife (Ainaz Azarhoush), who is in prison for posting support of women’s rights online in Iran.
Blind Runner, written and directed by Amir Reza Koohestani, features only two actors. Set in Iran, the play is about a husband (Mohammed Reza Hosseinzadeh) and wife (Ainaz Azarhoush) who now only meet during prison visiting hours. Neither has an actual name. Wife is serving a sentence for something she posted on social media. Although it’s not specific, there is a suggestion she showed support for women who protested the 2022 killing of Mahsa Amini by the Guidance Patrol, a type of morality police. The post alters the lives of the couple.
Both Husband and Wife are runners: he in the open air, free to follow any path he likes, and she in the small strip of grass in the courtyard of the prison when she can. In the director’s notes, Koohestani states that he’s a runner, and running is central to this play, while it also serves as a unifying metaphor for the tension of the husband and wife’s disparate experiences.
Azarhoush doubles as an imprisoned wife and as a blind runner for whom her husband (Hosseinzadeh) will act as a guide in a marathon in Paris. Photographs by Amir Hamja.
The couple talk of freedom, but soon their relationship comes to a stalemate: he’s free, she’s not; what do they really have in common now? Wife meets a mother in prison whose daughter was shot in the face and blinded. The mother asks her if Wife’s husband could be her guide. Before being blinded, she was a marathon runner and wants to run a marathon in Paris. The wife asks her husband to be the blind runner’s guide, but he says no. He argues that he doesn’t have experience giving the verbal and physical cues or running with someone either tethered or untethered but needing to have physical contact to guide them. To guide or not to guide the blind runner gives them something tangible to talk about, and persuading him seems to give her a sense of purpose.
Koohestani’s show is in Farsi with English supertitles. The luminous videography (Yasi Moradi and Benjamin Krieg) is in livestream and captures different angles of the two actors as they move toward and away from the ends of the stage. Sometimes they appear side by side on the video as they run in their separate space, and at other times they appear as two ships passing in the night.
“Koohestani’s delicate directing both cocoons the actors and emphasizes their desolation. ”
The cavernous space of St. Ann’s Warehouse is fully stripped down, but Koohestani’s delicate directing both cocoons the actors and emphasizes their desolation. A soft soundscape (Philip Hohenwarter and Matthias Peyker) and dark and shadowy lighting and scenography (Éric Soyer) create an ominous and eerie feeling. The gentleness of these elements belies the horrible reality. Without saying as much, the play surfaces a wondering of what prison must be like for someone who has not committed a grievous crime, but an ideological one.
Blind Runner is peppered with ironic humor: while trying to figure out if the little red dot in the corner of the room is a camera, the couple peers at it. The husband thinks it’s too far to be effective and wonders if there’s a camera on each of them.
Wife: One camera each.
Husband: Like on TV.
Wife: They can zoom as much as they’d like.
Husband: With a camera here, they wouldn’t need to zoom (...) Cameras with such strong zooms are expensive.
Wife: You have concerns for them?
Husband: It’s our taxes.
Wife: There’s a suggestion box at the entrance.
When the play begins, supertitles inform the audience that the play is many things: a true story, based on fact, a work of fiction. The themes are true, but the details are stitched together as a composite of historical, cultural, and social stories.
Both Husband (Hosseinzadeh) and Wife (Azarhoush) are runners: one still in the open air, in freedom, and the other in the prison yard when she can.
At one point, a conversation turns to spiders. Wife has been studying one and says: “Did you know that after intercourse the female eats the male?”
Husband: Why eat it? She could let it go.
Wife: Struggle for life. (…) It could get worse.
Husband: How?
Wife: They could cut us off.
Husband: Why? We’re talking about spiders.
Ainaz Azarhoush and Mohammed Reza Hosseinzadeh, both accomplished actors in their home country of Iran, handle the physical demands of the running effortlessly, and their quiet voices crowd the stage with emotion, emphasizing the terrifying reality captured in the play.
Blind Runner is presented as part of the Under the Radar festival at St. Ann’s Warehouse (45 Water St., Brooklyn) through Jan. 24. Evening performances are at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday; matinees are at 2 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 18, and 1 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 22. For more information, visit stannswarehouse.org.
Text & Direction: Amir Reza Koohestani
Lights & Scenography: Éric Soyer
Video: Yasi Moradi and Benjamin Krieg
Music: Philip Hohenwarter and Matthias Peyker
Costume Design: Negar Nobakht Foghani
