Amir Reza Koohestani Mehr Theatre Group Blind Runner
[Theatre]
Two long-distance runners train and help each other out in an attempt to cross the Channel Tunnel, on foot, in order to reach the United Kingdom. The Iranian artist Amir Reza Koohestani brings this challenge to the stage in a reflection on freedom, solidarity and pushing oneself to the limits.
Born in 1978, in Shiraz, Amir Reza Koohestani carries the voice of contemporary Iranian theatre to the outside world. Performed in major theatres throughout Europe, his productions deal, in an unceasing manner, with the questions of frontiers and surveillance in society, via sparse, hard-hitting staging. Following on from En transit, presented in 2022 at the Festival d’Automne, the artist returns with Blind Runner, a show performed in Farsi for an actress and an actor. The piece opens with a couple as they reunite with each other, in the visiting room of a penitentiary building, in Iran. The female protagonist, a political prisoner, asks her partner to come to the aid of a female friend of hers. The latter, who is blind, is waiting in France before attempting to cross the 27km-long Channel Tunnel in order to find a new life in Great Britain. Blind Runner tells the story of their training, the daunting obstacles they must overcome, and of a freedom which is obtained, against all odds, from out of the darkness.
