English subtitles. Photo courtesy of SCR/Benjamin Krieg
In “Blind Runner,” a play developed by the Obie Award-winning, Iranian-founded, Paris-based Mehr Theatre Group that makes its West Coast premiere this weekend at South Coast Repertory, politics has a way of intruding on the most intimate of relationships.
Written and directed by Amir Reza Koohestani, the play premiered in Brussels in 2023 and follows an Iranian man whose wife has been imprisoned for political activism. When she asks him to help Parisa, a young woman blinded during anti-government protests, he reluctantly agrees to become her guide in a daring protest against European immigration policies: an attempt to run through the Channel Tunnel from France to England.
What begins as an act of loyalty to his wife becomes a test of love, political conviction and just how much one person is willing to risk for another’s freedom.
The 60-minute play uses just two actors to portray three characters, with Ainaz Azarhoush playing both the imprisoned wife and the blind runner. On a largely bare stage, live cameras and video projections create shifting perspectives, sometimes presenting images that contradict what audiences see unfolding before them. The play is performed in the Farsi language with English supertitles.
The production’s preoccupation with borders has taken on an ironic dimension for its American engagement. U.S. visa restrictions prevented several Iranian members of the company from traveling to Southern California, prompting Koohestani to direct remotely and forcing significant personnel changes to the production.
Even answering questions for this interview became something of an international journey.
“I answered these questions in three countries in four days,” Koohestani wrote. “I began in Shiraz, where I was when they arrived.”
He continued his answers in Istanbul and finished them in Berlin.
Mohammad Reza Hosseinzadeh and Ainaz Azarhoush in the 2023 world premiere of “Blind Runner” in Brussels, Belgium. Photo courtesy of SCR/Benjamin Krieg 
“Blind Runner” involves a man whose wife is imprisoned for political activism agreeing to train a blind runner to prepare for a harrowing run through the Channel Tunnel linking France and Great Britain. Photo courtesy of SCR/Benjamin Krieg
EDITOR’S NOTE
The following exchange has been edited for length and clarity.
Culture OC: What was the original impulse for “Blind Runner”?
Amir Reza Koohestani: It began with an image: a blind runner and a sighted guide tied together by a short band. The rules of guide running say they may never be more than fifty centimeters apart; the guide may not pull or push; and if the guide crosses the line first, both are disqualified. The band is help and restraint in the same object.
The marriage and the political situation came after the image, and they came together. Around the band I placed lives I knew: a woman whose years are counted in visiting hours, a husband who arrives each week with a little less to say, a young woman who lost her sight in the protests and still wants to run.
COC: Running suggests freedom, escape, endurance and political resistance. What attracted you to it as the central metaphor?
ARK: A prisoner counts time and a runner counts distance, and both are trying to get through a stretch they cannot shorten. In the play, running is escape, then endurance, and in the end a political act, because the body is the one thing the characters can still decide how to use.
COC: The play begins with a marriage strained by imprisonment, then expands into larger political issues. How did you connect the intimate story to those broader concerns?
ARK: In Iran, there is no clean line between the private story and the political one. A wife in prison is a political fact. It is also a weekly visit, a short phone call, a husband deciding what not to tell her. I began in the visiting room and followed it outward one step at a time, the way the characters are pulled outward.
The conflict between a cause and a person interested me, but I did not want to settle it. The wife has paid for her commitment with her freedom. Her husband pays for it too, in waiting, in loneliness, in a house that has gone quiet. When she asks him to help Parisa, she is asking him to take on part of her commitment, and he hears that.
COC: Why was it important that Parisa be blind? What does sight, and the inability to see, mean in the play?
ARK: Parisa lost her sight during the (2022 Woman, Life, Freedom) protests. I did not want to turn her injury into a symbol, so in the play her blindness is first a practical condition. She needs a guide, and the guide needs her to trust him. Only after that does it become a question for the audience. The stage holds two live cameras, one screen and a subtitle screen, and everyone in the story is being watched. The one person who cannot see is the one who has to trust the most.
Parisa sees what the husband, who can see, does not. This mattered more to me because the stage is full of cameras. A camera claims to show us the truth, and so do our eyes, and both can deceive us. Sometimes the way to see is to switch the camera off, or to close your eyes.
COC: Why have the same actress portray both Parisa and the imprisoned wife?
ARK: Ainaz Azarhoush plays both the imprisoned wife and Parisa. The wife can see and cannot move. Parisa can run and cannot see. Each woman lacks what the other has, and when one actress carries both, the audience feels they belong to the same story.
WHy This Story
For SCR, ‘Blind Runner’ is About Storytelling, Not Making a Political Statement
Artistic Director David Ivers explains why the Iranian play caught his attention long before the war and what makes watching it in Farsi a distinctive theatrical experience.
At first glance, there seems no escaping the political implications of an Iranian theater company performing a play about repression, resistance and immigration at an American theater during a war involving Iran.
But South Coast Repertory Artistic Director David Ivers insists that bringing “Blind Runner” to Costa Mesa isn’t intended as a political statement; it’s a decision based on the quality of the work.
“I don’t have any other motive other than the art, the work,” Ivers said. “It’s got to cut the mustard, meaning it’s got to be really profound work that hits our stages and be executed at high caliber.”
Besides, the play premiered in 2023, long before the current conflict. Ivers had been following it for years, particularly after its 2025 engagement at St. Ann’s Warehouse in New York. When it appeared the production might not tour again, he and SCR Managing Director Suzanne Appel pursued the company. SCR announced the engagement before the war began.
“It really isn’t saying anything about the war,” Ivers said. “It doesn’t interface with that at all.”
That doesn’t mean “Blind Runner” lacks political substance. Its story is rooted in the repression of women’s rights in Iran and the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom protests. One character is imprisoned for political activism, while another, blinded during the protests, trains with the prisoner’s husband to run through the Channel Tunnel in protest of Britain’s restrictive immigration policies.
But Ivers is drawn more to the human drama.
“I’m always drawn to stories where people are demonstrating resilience to overcome obstacles,” he said. “It’s timeless, and I think uniquely human.”
The play also fits for SCR in that it reflects the diverse audience base of Orange County. In addition to “Blind Runner,” SCR produced “avaaz,” Michael Shayan’s one-person play about his Iranian immigrant mother, in 2023, and “Wish You Were Here,” a play about five Iranian women, by Orange County-born Sanaz Toossi, in 2025.
“Blind Runner” also offers an unusual theatrical experience. Performed entirely in Farsi with English supertitles, it combines live performance with video projections, requiring spectators to divide their attention between the actors, their projected images and translated dialogue.
Ivers believes that the watching and reading experience creates an intriguing parallel between audiences and Parisa, the blind runner. As she navigates a world she cannot see, English-speaking spectators must navigate a story told in a language they may not understand.
“We have to navigate our own discomfort and our own potential learning,” Ivers said, describing it as an “interesting equalizing thing between the character and the audience.”
While acknowledging he is not an expert in Farsi, Ivers said he finds the language beautiful and believes audiences hearing an unfamiliar language while reading its translation can enrich the theatrical experience.
Ultimately, Ivers isn’t interested in telling audiences what conclusions to draw about Iran, immigration or anything else.
“It’s an exceptional, fantastic and powerful story,” he said. “And I leave it up to our audience to decide how it affects their point of view.”
COC: The Channel Tunnel physically connects two countries, yet immigration restrictions make that connection inaccessible to some people. Was that contradiction part of its appeal?
ARK: Yes, that contradiction is what drew me. The Channel Tunnel joins two countries and is built for trains. The people who most need to cross are the ones who cannot use it legally. In the play, the runners have a few hours to cover the distance before the first morning train.
I did not want the story to stay inside Iran, because for many Iranians it does not end at the prison gate or at the border of the country. It continues in Calais, in an asylum office, in a camp. Repression at home and immigration policy in Europe are different systems, and the same people meet both, one after the other. The run through the tunnel puts them on a single route.
COC: Your staging is spare, but the video work is sophisticated. What interests you about having audiences choose between watching the actors and their projected images?
ARK: Cinema came into my rehearsal room a long time ago, and my theater thinks in shots as much as in scenes. The stage is spare because the image needs room. If the stage were full, the eye would have nowhere to choose.
Theater is the only art form where an audience can see the live and the virtual at the same moment, side by side, in the same room. We live at a time when it is harder every year to tell what is real from what is not. That is why I keep bringing video, and especially live cameras, onto the stage. I don’t want to waste the one place where both can be watched together.
ARK: “Blind Runner” premiered in Brussels in 2023 and has toured internationally. Do audiences respond differently?
A: “Blind Runner” is the first play I have written in Persian that has never been performed in Iran. It premiered in Brussels and has toured only outside the country, so for most of its life it has played to audiences reading subtitles. New York was different. Twenty or 30% of the audience at St. Ann’s Warehouse spoke Persian, more than a thousand people over the run.
With a Persian-speaking audience, the actors feel at once where the house is listening, and they learn how much room to leave. Even the people reading the subtitles feel the difference. Los Angeles has a larger Persian-speaking community than New York, so I expect the performances in Costa Mesa to be warmer still.
COC: Why can’t you direct this production in person, and how have the immigration restrictions affected the company?
ARK: The company performed at St. Ann’s Warehouse in New York in January 2025. We applied for American visas in November 2024, and I believe we were among the last Iranian passport holders to receive them. When South Coast Repertory sent the invitation, we were told that actors and technicians with Iranian passports could not obtain visas. There might have been a route for me alone, through an exceptional visa. I decided not to pursue it. I didn’t want to come without the colleagues who performed the piece with me.
So the company changed shape. Éric Soyer, Phillip Hohenwarter and Benjamin Krieg co-created “Blind Runner” in 2023 but never toured with it, and they are the ones traveling to Costa Mesa, thanks to their European passports. Mohammad Aghebati, who lives in New York, plays the part Mohammad Reza Hosseinzadeh originally played.
COC: Have you directed remotely before? What is lost when you’re not physically in the rehearsal room?
ARK: I have worked at a distance before. “Blind Runner” itself was made that way: Our dramaturg, Samaneh Ahmadian, worked with me entirely by phone, and the whole team was in one room for the first time only two weeks before the premiere.
Diana Fathi is the associate director in the room. She has known my work for a long time; we have talked about it a great deal, and I can rely on her eye. Ainaz has worked with me on two productions and has been rehearsing and performing “Blind Runner” for more than three and a half years. She knows the aesthetics of the whole piece, not only her own roles, and she is a guide for Mohammad as much as a partner. I join by Zoom, and the actors, Diana, and I keep a shared group where we talk between sessions.
COC: And is anything lost, or gained, by directing remotely?
ARK: What is lost is the small adjustment you make without words, standing next to an actor. What is gained, I will know after the opening. My one regret is that I will not see Mohammad play in front of an audience.
EVENT DETAILS
‘Blind Runner’
When: Oct. 18 – Nov. 8
Where: South Coast Reportory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa
Tickets: $25-$112
More Info: scr.org
COC: What might surprise American audiences about artistic freedom and the contemporary theater scene in Tehran?
ARK: Tehran is one of the few cities in the world where theatre is this alive, and in the region it has no equal. On any evening, around 150 live performances take place in the city. Even a play performed through official channels still needs its text registered and approved by the Ministry of Culture. Since the Woman, Life, Freedom movement began in 2022, the rules have loosened, the dress code most visibly, but the approval is still required.
Alongside that, a large network of independent theater makers exists. They perform in basements, in cars, in parking lots, and now also in established venues, and they sell tickets through their own channels and build their own audiences. I have visited Tehran a few times in the last couple of years, and each time I have been astonished by how many young theater makers there are, and that most of them are women: directors, writers, choreographers.
COC: What do you hope audiences take away from “Blind Runner”?
ARK: I don’t like to tell an audience what to take home. If something stays, I hope it is the band: the question of who you are tied to, whose pace you are matching, and who is matching yours.
Related Stories
Rhapsody in Taps Brings Southern California’s Tap Dance History to the Screen
Bei Bei Bridges the Divide Between Traditional and Modern Music
Curtains Up for Cinematic Celebrations: Your Guide to Orange County’s 2026 Fall Film Festivals
When It Comes to Censorship, Who Gets to Wield the Eraser?Recent Stories
Composing Hope and Healing: Pamela Madsen Turns Her Cancer Journey Into MusicRhapsody in Taps Brings Southern California’s Tap Dance History to the ScreenBei Bei Bridges the Divide Between Traditional and Modern MusicCurtains Up for Cinematic Celebrations: Your Guide to Orange County’s 2026 Fall Film Festivals
At Culture OC, our mission is to engage with a diverse range of Orange County’s artistic and cultural communities at every level by publishing news and critical analysis to encourage interest, participation, fellowship and dialogue.