I saw three shows at this year’s Under the Radar festival: Blind Runner, The Horse of Jenin, and A Knock on the Roof. At each, I giggled, shed tears, and marveled at some of the best theatre I’ve seen in recent memory. Blind Runner, The Horse of Jenin, and A Knock on the Roof are distinct stories, connected by their diligent personalization of the violence of oppression. The three stirring plays tell the stories of everyday people as they resist, envision freedom, and try to survive imprisonment and occupation.
Blind Runner
The two actors in Amir Reza Koohestani’s Blind Runner at St. Ann’s Warehouse touch each other only once. As the whirlwind 60-minute production progresses, the sense of intimacy between a political prisoner in Tehran (Ainaz Azarhoush) and her husband (Mohammad Reza Hosseinzadeh) strains – across phone lines, prison walls, and countries.
The wife convinces her husband to guide a blind woman, Parissa (also played by Azarhoush), through a marathon in Paris. As husband and wife grow distant, he and Parissa develop a unique intimacy: a shared rhythm of breath and footsteps. After they run the marathon, Parissa — who was blinded in an act of state violence for protesting — persuades him to run the 38 km Channel Tunnel from France to the United Kingdom with her, in protest of the criminalization of migrants. If they time it wrong, they will be hit by a train. Blind Runner is a haunting snapshot into the lives of people whose relationships are eroded and sustained by their defiance to oppression.
Blind Runner, presented in partnership with Mehr Theatre Group, is both about intimacy and the oppressive forces that structure its expression. State violence organizes the lives and relationships of husband and wife, guide and runner. This dynamic is solidified by the production’s sparing design. Sterile, harsh lighting against a minimalist, all-black set suggests isolation. Ever-present cameras surveil, projecting video of the two actors, who never appear in the same shot, onto the back wall of the stage, as if to represent the gaze of the state.
Still, a shared condition of oppression connects the three characters in Blind Runner. They try to assert agency and control through defiance to a repressive state. They speak out online (which earns the wife her prison time), demonstrate (which results in Parissa losing her eyesight), run (in prison, at home, and through the Channel Tunnel), and aim, perhaps futilely, to relate to each other across prison walls. They intimately understand the conditions that breed resistance. As such, they respect and — they’re only human — resent, undermine, and leverage each other’s choices to resist. The show’s final moments see runner and guide link arms at the mouth of the Channel Tunnel. The play’s climax of intimacy is marked by this shared act of protest.
The Horse of Jenin
German artist Thomas Klipper made the Jenin Horse together with the people of the occupied West Bank city. They built the 16-foot sculpture following the Israeli military’s brutal attack on Jenin in 2002. It was stationed at the entrance of Jenin Refugee Camp for two decades. On October 29th, 2023 — 21 days into Israel’s latest escalation of its genocide against the Palestinian people — the Israeli military destroyed the horse.
In his solo show The Horse of Jenin, writer and performer Alaa Shehada recounts clinging to the horse’s legs alongside his best friend, Ahmed, as they paraded around the city with it. Shehada recalls blowing kisses to his first love through the horse’s legs, and sharing coffee with family at its feet. He notes it was made of pieces of Ahmed’s destroyed Xbox, the door of an ambulance shot down by the Israeli military, and his primary school teacher’s clunky Nokia cell phone. A patchwork of memories, rubble, and remains, the horse was evidence of the destruction of occupation and the resolve of those who fight to be free from it.
The Horse of Jenin, which closed its La MaMa run earlier this month, is a meaningful homage to the horse and the people to whom it belonged. The captivating solo show effortlessly holds the full spectrum of what it means to be human, conjuring everything from child-like silliness to unimaginable grief. Playing with masks and a keffiyeh, Shehada embodies his younger self, grandfather, mother, and more with humor, grace, and sincerity.
The Horse of Jenin, like Blind Runner, addresses the way oppression structures the everyday lives of Shehada and his loved ones. In Shehada’s stories, the occupation and its events, enforcers, and opposers mark time. He notes, “After the Second Intifada ended, my first love began.” He recounts never making it to his first date because an Israeli soldier stopped his bus. Later, Shehada’s performance at Jenin Refugee Camp’s Freedom Theatre is interrupted by the Israeli military firing shots outside. The soldiers kill Ahmed. Later still, soldiers remove the horse.
“You can destroy a horse but not its meaning,” Shehada declares. His task — of sharing the stolen kisses, coffees, and cigarettes of those whose lives are structured by occupation — is vital. The Horse of Jenin is itself proof of the significance of storytelling, made even moreso amid the horrors of genocide. For in sharing the story of the Jenin Horse, Shehada keeps alive that which the occupation and its enforcers try to destroy. The horse lives on, and, as he puts it, “becomes ours.”
A Knock on the Roof
The knock in A Knock on the Roof is actually a bomb. It’s a reference to the Israeli military’s practice of “roof knocking,” which is dropping a “less forceful” explosive on a building with civilians in it to “warn” them that a bigger one is coming. After the “knock,” people have a few minutes to flee before their homes are decimated.
Khawla Ibraheem’s one woman show at New York Theatre Workshop tells the story of Mariam, a mother in Gaza, preparing for the dreaded moment that she, her son, and her mother will need to flee their home to escape the impending bombs. Over and over again, she practices, timing herself, to see how far she can run with the essentials and her son in her arms.
Like The Horse of Jenin, A Knock on the Roof illustrates the impacts of occupation on everyday life. Ibraheem, under the direction of Oliver Butler, is tormented and captivating, painting a heartbreaking portrait of humanity in the pressure cooker created by the imminent threat of death. Simultaneously, the play skillfully indulges compelling flickers of human resentment, desire, and humor. Ibraheem’s Mariam is hilarious and charismatic, making jabs about the amount of time her mom spends on the toilet, and cursing her more athletic friend for being right about running. While she worries about staying alive, she laments not having enough room to pack her expensive skin care and a green silk dress she loved but never got to wear. It’s relatable.
A Knock on the Roof, a co-production with piece by piece productions, is not only about surviving, but mothering. Amid the violence of occupation, the demands of motherhood are made more consequential. While trying to keep her son alive, Mariam recalls never wanting to be a mother, then immediately feels guilty. She resents her husband, abroad finishing his master’s degree, while her own dreams of studying mathematics slip away. Frantic and distraught, Mariam must prove to herself how well she can survive, but also how well she can mother, putting someone else’s survival above her own, and drowning out existential questions with practical ones.
Critically, A Knock on the Roof personalizes the violence that power structures so often aim to depersonalize. Ibraheem shows us how one ordinary mother unravels amid her struggle for survival, and, necessarily, periodically stops to point the finger at us, an audience whose government is funding genocide in Gaza. What would you pack? Where would you go? How would your unraveling look?
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Blind Runner, The Horse of Jenin, and A Knock on the Roof are all a part of this year’s Under the Radar Festival. A Knock on the Roof runs through February 16, 2025.
