REVIEW: ‘Blind Runner’ is unconventional theater at its best
Photo: Blind Runner stars Mohammad Reza Hosseinzadeh and Ainaz Azarhoush. Photo courtesy of Amir Hamja / Provided by Blake Zidell & Associates with permission.
NEW YORK — St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn is currently playing host to the exquisite production of Blind Runner, which continues through Jan. 24 at the venerable DUMBO institution. This experimental piece of theater, written and directed by Amir Reza Koohestani, features two performers involved in a real saga of imprisonment, persecution and separation. But their ordeal also drips with symbolism and speaks to the power of freedom that comes when one puts their shoes on the pavement and begins to run.
Ainaz Azarhoush and Mohammad Reza Hosseinzadeh, both performing in Farsi with English supertitles, play characters who never quite meet during the hour-length play. They are separated by subtle theatrical flourishes, whether bars of lights on the floor of St. Ann’s Warehouse or video projectors that keep them side by side. They are playing a husband and wife, and they’re unable to meet and touch because the wife is incarcerated as a political prisoner in Iran. The separation is difficult for both of them, but they find a means of escape: The wife implores the husband to run a marathon in Paris alongside a blind woman. Their course for this unique challenge is a railroad tunnel that’s still in use, which adds an element of danger to their symbolic project.
What Koohestani is able to accomplish is a poetic rumination on the human cost of separation. He doesn’t involve the characters or the storyline in the politics of modern-day Iran or what led to Azarhoush’s character being incarcerated and denied her freedom. Instead, he’s more interested in seeing the toll that imprisonment can have on a person, and he does so with these clever theatrical tricks, which are minimal in execution but profound in imagery.
The gargantuan warehouse space at St. Ann’s is completely dark, except for the two performers, who almost seem stuck within their lighted boxes. They begin Blind Runner with an opening prologue that has fun with the “Based on a true story” line that begins so many cinematic stories. They change fact to fiction while writing words on a chalkboard; they add qualifiers, and change their minds about the meaning of the story they’re about to tell. This perfectly sets up the play as disputed text, as if solitary truth is an unattainable goal, especially for a tale of great import like the one being told in Blind Runner.
The performers are both powerfully effective in the dedication they bring to their individual performances. Because of the separate nature of the narrative, it’s almost as if these are two one-person shows stitched together into something new, something unseen before under a theatrical proscenium. They talk to each other. They run together. They are sometimes broadcast together on a screen. But they are not together. In fact, they seem worlds apart because of the realities of the situation their characters find themselves in.
What is ultimately accomplished in this two-hander is devastating and beautifully realized. It’s not much of a spoiler to say that the marathon race that has been talked about for the length of the play does happen, and when it begins, it’s difficult not to be emotionally moved by the imagery of how it’s brought to life. The audience is asked to consider what a marathon, what the very act of running, means to a person whose spouse is incarcerated. What does it mean for his running companion, this blind woman, who is also played by Azarhoush? They stay in step with each other while running these 38 kilometers, that is until what they’ve feared all along comes to bear.
Blind Runner is unconventional theater, even experimental in how it presents its narrative, but the play’s story is never lost amidst the risks that are taken with the storytelling techniques. Koohestani is as dedicated and diligent as the characters his cast members bring to life on stage. This is a story that bravely asks one to think about separation on an intimate, personal level, and what the audience learns along the way leaves a lasting impression.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Blind Runner, written and directed by Amir Reza Koohestani, stars Ainaz Azarhoush and Mohammad Reza Hosseinzadeh. The production, presented by St. Ann’s Warehouse and produced by Mehr Theatre Group, continues through Jan. 24 at 45 Water St. in DUMBO, Brooklyn, New York. Running time: 1 hour with no intermission. Presented in partnership with Waterwell and part of the Under the Radar Festival. Click here for more information and tickets.
