BLIND RUNNER

Amir Reza Koohestani (Playwright & Director) was born in Shiraz, Iran, in 1978, published his first short stories in local newspapers at sixteen and has been the artistic director of Mehr Theatre Group since 2001. With the company, he writes and directs his own work, including Dance on Glasses (2001), which first brought the group to European stages; Amid the Clouds (2005); The Fourth Wall (2012), his adaptation of Tim Crouch’s England, which played one hundred times in a Tehran art gallery; Timeloss (2013), Hearing (2015) and Summerless (2018), presented together as the “Time Trilogy” at the Festival TNB in Rennes and En Transit (2022). Mehr’s productions have been seen at the Festival d’Avignon, the Berliner Festspiele and more than 40 other international festivals. Blind Runner premiered at the Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels in May 2023, was presented at La Biennale di Venezia in 2024 and had its North American premiere at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn in January 2025 as part of the Under the Radar Festival. The production received a Special Citation at the 69th Obie Awards. As a guest director, he has worked at Münchner Kammerspiele, Deutsches Theater Berlin, Thalia Theater, La Comédie de Genève and Theater Freiburg, staging Heiner Müller’s Philoktet, Büchner’s Woyzeck and Shakespeare’s Macbeth. In 2017, he directed his first opera, Wagner’s Tannhäuser, at the Staatstheater Darmstadt. With Mani Haghighi, he co-wrote the films Modest Reception, which won the NETPAC Award at the 2012 Berlinale, and Subtraction (2023).

Mohammad Aghebati  is an award-winning Iranian theatre director and actor. A graduate of Art University in Tehran, he received accolades early in his career that led to his productions touring Asia and Europe while he was still in his 20s. Aghebati was invited to the United States through an artist residency at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 2009 that lead to a Special Research Fellowship at Yale University’s School of Drama. He received his MFA in Performance and Media Arts from Brooklyn College. Since, he has taught at institutions such as Tehran University and Shanghai School of Drama and has served as jury member at various festivals. Aghebati is also a known actor whose notable film projects include 2021 Grand Prix Winner at Cannes Film Festival, Hero, directed by the twice Oscar winning director, Asghar Farhadi; Modest Reception (Berlinale 2012), They (Cannes 2017), and is the lead of the Berlinale award-winning film The Great Yawn and 2025 Berlinale debut feature 1001 Frames.

Ainaz Azarhoush is an Iranian actress and filmmaker. Her film credits include Fish and Cat, winner of the Horizons Special Prize at the Venice Film Festival, The Paternal House and The Pig. On stage, she starred in Amir Reza Koohestani’s Hearing, presented internationally at Festival d’Avignon, Festival d’Automne in Paris, and Schaubühne in Berlin. She is currently touring with Koohestani’s Blind Runner, which premiered at Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels, completed a three-week Off-Broadway run at St. Ann’s Warehouse in New York and received a 2026 Obie Award Special Citation for its ensemble. Her recent U.S. stage credits include a leading role in Sanaz Toossi’s Wish You Were Here at ArtsWest in Seattle. She recently made her directorial debut with the short film Death of a Seagull, selected for LA Shorts International Film Festival and Linz International Short Film Festival in Austria.

Samaneh Ahmadian (Dramaturgy) is a dramaturg, translator and teacher based in Tehran. She holds a BA in Dramatic Literature from the University of Tehran. Her work focuses on contemporary theatre, dramaturgy, playwriting and cross-cultural collaborations. She has worked closely with Amir Reza Koohestani for several years, serving as assistant dramaturg on his productions in Germany­—including Taxigeschichten (Theater Oberhausen) and Der Fall Meursault, Die Attentäterin and Macbeth (Münchner Kammerspiele)—and as dramaturg on Blind Runner. She teaches play analysis and dramaturgy at the University of Tehran and has translated numerous contemporary Iranian plays for international presentation.

Dariush Faezi (Director’s Assistant) is a theatre actor. He has played the lead role in several successful plays in Iran and internationally (Great Britain, Finland, Tunisia, India, Czech Republic, Italy, etc.). He has also worked as an assistant director in several national and international productions, directed three productions in national theatres in Iran and acted in two films and TV series. Blind Runner is his first collaboration with Amir Reza Koohestani.

Éric Soyer (Lights & Scenography) shares the writing and staging process with many directors, authors, choreographers and composers, from Europe to Asia. His curiosity and his visual language have brought him from theatre to dance, from contemporary opera to live music, from musicals to circus, from visual art to live performance. His recent work in Paris includes Licht and Le Parc, with Angelin Preljocaj, at the Théâtre de la Ville and the Opéra de Paris; the oratorio Antigone with Netia Jones and Pascal Dusapin; Josepha Madoki’s Garbo at the Philharmonie; at the Grand Palais d’été, Vertiges with Rachid Ouramdane and Crescendo, a retrospective of four pieces by Maud Le Pladec. At Sadler’s Wells in London, he created Veins of Water, also with Le Pladec. With Nacera Belaza, he worked on À l’infini at the Opéra de Lyon and on La Valse at the Opera Ballet Vlaanderen. Also at Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, he created the opera De Materie with the performer Phia Ménard. He also collaborates with the acrobats of XY at the Palais des Papes for the Festival d’Avignon. He is a regular artistic collaborator of Amir Reza Koohestani.

Negar Nobakht Forghani (Costume Design) born in 1979, began her career in theatre in 2009 as stage manager and subtitle operator on Quartet: A Journey North, directed by Amir Reza Koohestani. She went on to collaborate with Koohestani on Amid the Clouds and Hearing, and most recently on Blind Runner, for which she served as costume designer and subtitle operator. Blind Runner has toured extensively across Europe, as well as in South Korea, Japan and the United States, among other countries. Throughout her career, Nobakht Foghani has worked across the technical and production sides of theatre as well as in costume design, collaborating with Mehr Theatre Group on productions presented both in Iran and internationally.

Yasi Moradi (Video Design) is an Iranian filmmaker and video artist based in Berlin. Her practice moves between theatre and cinema, encompassing video, live image and documentary forms. She is interested in the role images can play within a performance’s dramaturgy, as well as in the space between what is staged and what is lived. She has worked as a video artist, filmmaker, editor and director’s assistant on theatre productions in Iran and Europe. For several years, she has collaborated with Mehr Theatre Group and director Amir Reza Koohestani, contributing to productions presented on international stages and at festivals. Alongside her theatre work, Moradi develops independent film projects. Her current practice explores identity, memory, displacement, intimacy and the ways personal lives are shaped by their social and political surroundings.

Benjamin Krieg (Video Design) is a Berlin-based independent media artist and photographer working across the performing and visual arts. Since 2010, his ongoing collaboration with the feminist performance collective She She Pop has resulted in extensive international touring across Europe, Asia, North and South America. Beyond this, his work spans numerous collaborations with acclaimed directors, curators and visual artists, bridging major German state theatres with international independent productions and renowned festivals worldwide, including the Venice Biennale, New York’s Under the Radar and Kyoto Experiment. Additionally, he regularly shares his artistic experience and approaches through international workshops and lectureships focusing on video work in the field of the performing arts.

Phillip Hohenwarter (Music) is a video, sound and media artist based in Berlin, whose work moves between theatre, performance, installation, digital art, music, film and extended reality. He has contributed video works to productions by directors including Meg Stuart, Yael Ronen, Falk Richter, Romeo Castellucci, She She Pop, Nicolas Stemann and Thomas Ostermeier. The production Die Maschine, directed by Anita Vulesica at Schauspielhaus Hamburg, for which he created the video, was invited to Theatertreffen Berlin in 2025 and received a Nestroy Prize in Vienna for Best Production in German-Language Theatre. Since 2018 he has been working regularly with Amir Reza Koohestani, developing productions such as Blind Runner and En Transit.

Matthias Peyker (Music) Sound artist, composer, field recordist also working in painting, graphic art and video. Exhibitions and concerts—both with collectives and as a solo artist. Music for performances and audio walks, including We Will Figure It Out and Invisible Collection by Sööt/Zeyringer at Brut Wien. Compositions for films by Christoph Schwarz and Antoinette Zwirchmayr, screened at festivals such as the Berlinale, the Seville European Film Festival, the Viennale and Diagonale. Productions for theatre include working with Christian Winkler at Lichthof Theater Hamburg; with Phillip Hohenwarter at the Salzburg State Theatre on the production Caligula (directed by John von Düffel and Marike Moiteaux) and more recently with Amir Reza Koohestani—among other venues—at the Thalia Theater Hamburg and the Deutsches Theater Berlin on plays such as Transit, Woyzeck Interrupted and Blind Runner.

Diana Fathi (Associate Director & Show Caller) (she/her) is a multidisciplinary theatre maker and educator. Her recent professional credits include Production Dramaturg for English at Alliance Theatre; Dramaturg Consultant in Education for the Broadway production of English at Roundabout Theatre Company; Co-Adapter and Associate Director for Much Ado About Nothing at Two River Theater; and Director of Romeo and Juliet for Two River Theater. Her work spans directing and dramaturgy, with a particular interest in new plays and works engaging with migration, language and cultural translation. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Theatre and Drama at UC Irvine and UC San Diego and holds an MFA in Dramaturgy from Columbia University.

Massoumeh Lahidji (English Translation & Surtitle Adaptation) is a freelance interpreter and translator specialising in film. She works in five languages. She has been the permanent interpreter at the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes since 2007. Her role includes presenting and moderating the Q&A sessions for all films, in collaboration with the festival’s artistic director. Lahidji works at many other international film festivals, where she leads press conferences and masterclasses (Deauville, La Rochelle, Les Arcs in France, but also Locarno, Marrakech, Toronto, NYFF). Lahidji has worked with directors such as Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Abel Ferrara, David Cronenberg, Steven Soderbergh, John Boorman, Stephen Frears, Werner Herzog, Abbas Kiarostami and actors such as Harvey Keitel, Dustin Hoffman, Jim Carrey, Forest Whitaker, Cate Blanchett and Meryl Streep. Lahidji has also adapted scripts for international productions (Copie conforme, Le Passé) and acted as a go-between for directors and actors on multilingual shoots (Copie conforme, Bird People). She wrote the subtitles for Winter Sleep, Palme d’or at Cannes, for which she won an award. Since 2011, she has been producing the French and English subtitles for Amir Reza Koohestani’s productions and interpreting during meetings with the public or at press conferences. In 2021, she curated the exhibition Où est l’ami Kiarostami? at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, dedicated to the work of Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, with whom she had collaborated for many years.

Pierre Reis (Production, Administration & Promotion) has been working with performing artists for 22 years. He has collaborated with numerous stage directors, choreographers, sound artists and visual artists, developing various forms of support. In 2005, he met Amir Reza Koohestani and since then has developed a collaboration encompassing company and tour administration, production, communication, etc. Reis has also worked at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord (Paris), with Peter Brook, at La Maison de la Culture d’Amiens, at the Théâtre National de Bretagne in Rennes and at the Formart production office.

Mehr Theatre Group was founded in 1996 in Shiraz, Iran, as an acting workshop seeking a new theatrical language, distinct from traditional forms and strongly influenced by cinema. Based in Paris since 2008 and administered by French producer Pierre Reis, the company works between Tehran and exile, bringing together artists inside and outside Iran and regularly collaborating with non-Iranian designers and composers. Led by writer-director Amir Reza Koohestani—whose academic work in Manchester focused on post-9/11 documentary theatre—with long-time collaborator and playwright Mahin Sadri and Iranian production manager and actor Mohammad Reza Hosseinzadeh, the Mehr Theatre Group creates text-driven, documentary-inspired pieces that combine personal archives, interviews and everyday documents with a precise, minimalist staging. Since working in German theatres, Koohestani has developed a distinctive use of live PTZ “surveillance” cameras, allowing images from the stage to be framed and recomposed in real time. Memory, testimony and the feeling of living between two worlds—past and present, homeland and elsewhere—run through all of Mehr’s productions, even when they are based on classics such as Ivanov. Mehr’s internationally known works—including Dance on Glasses, Timeloss, Hearing, En Transit and Blind Runner—have toured to major festivals such as Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Holland Festival, Wiener Festwochen, Festival d’Avignon, Festival d’Automne à Paris, La Biennale di Venezia, Under The Radar, etc. and the company has received multiple awards in Iran, including Best Theatre Company (2010), as well as several international prizes for its productions, such as a Special Citation at the 69th Obie Awards (2025).