Blind Runner

“mesmerising…stunningly performed…deeply moving” – The Guardian

Obie Awards 2025 – Special Citation

Biennale Teatro Venice 2024

Once a week, a husband comes to visit his wife, a political prisoner.

Spied on by cameras and under constant surveillance, their conversations become increasingly fraught and distant, leading to incomprehension and a crippling inability to put into words the harshness of daily life.

At his wife's insistence, the husband agrees to guide a young blind woman through a race in Paris. They have to find a common rhythm; over the course of their training sessions, both get to know each other.

Once the competition ends, another race emerges. He now has to help her get to England by crossing the Channel Tunnel, covering 38 kilometers in just a few hours so as to avoid being hit by the first train in the morning. Between the confines of the prison and the sense of freedom afforded by the race, emerges a poetic vision of the struggle, of mutual aid, and of the freedom towards which we rush headlong into.

A 2023 co-production with several key international festivals—Kunstenfestivaldearts (Brussels), Festival d’Automne à Paris, Noorderzon Festival of Performing Arts & Society (Netherlands), Berliner Festspiele, and Under the Radar Festival (New York)—Blind Runner deftly and gracefully interweaves the destinies of three individuals, each grappling with oppression in their own ways.

Iran’s Amir Reza Koohestani and Mehr Theatre Group return to Singapore for the first time since 2014, where their presentation of Amid The Clouds at Singapore International Festival of Arts (SIFA) was praised by The Business Times for being an “austere and restrained piece … steeped in poignancy and meaning.”

True to his stripped-down approach for the stage, Iranian director Amir Reza Koohestani now deploys video to multiply the possibilities of the narrative, encouraging the spectator's gaze to roam freely from the performers' bodies to their filmed faces. In so doing, he has once again created an undoubtedly striking and moving show.

Curious about Koohestani’s practice? Join the director in his Masterclass: Daily Life as Performance – Crafting Narratives from Everyday Experiences (3 Aug), and explore how ordinary events, private habits and seemingly minor interactions can be transformed into theatrical material.

Hear from Koohestani and Haresh Sharma in In Conversation: Making Theatre of the Everyday (1 Aug), moderated by Kok Heng Leun, to explore how everyday life and lived experiences can serve as the core materials for devising emotionally and politically resonant work.

KEY PRODUCTION CREDITS

Text and direction: Amir Reza Koohestani

Dramaturgy: Samaneh Ahmadian
Director’s assistant: Dariush Faezi
Lights and scenography: Éric Soyer

Video: Yasi Moradi, Benjamin Kreig
Music: Philip Hohenwarter, Matthias Peyker
Costume design: Negar Nobakht Foghani

Performers: Ainaz Azarhoush, Mohmammad Reza Hosseinzadeh

English translation and surtitle adaptation: Massoumeh Lahidji

Surtitles operator: Negar Nobakht Foghani

Production, administration, and promotion: Pierre Reis

Blind Runner is supported by The Institut Français and The Ministry of Culture – DRAC Île-de-France.