iulia isar is a Romanian actor, theatre maker & youth worker. Her work is often a subject of tragicomedy, political theatre, clowning & the buffoon.
She is an associate artist of BÉZNĂ Theatre, recent projects include Wipe These Tears, The People’s Tribunal on Crimes of Aggression: Afghanistan Sessions, & as assistant director on How to Break out of a Detention Centre, a co production with GIUVLIPEN at Riverside Studios.
CRY FOR ME is a dystopian cabaret that imagines a not too implausible world in which crying can be outsourced -like everything else we don’t have time for- to a cheap migrant workforce. It’s based on Romanian folk customs of wailing for the dead, where professional mourners come to funerals to cry for the deceased, exorcising grief and allowing families to feel that their personal loss is also a communal loss. Professional mourning originated as a practice in Ancient Egypt, China, the Mediterranean and Near Eastern cultures, and it’s swiftly dying out around the world. In Romania, the wailers (bocitoare) are mostly older women (babe), rooted in their communities with deep, encyclopaedic knowledge of their neighbours. When these women die, the whole practice will die with them.
"It is precisely these types of projects, involving these types of people, in these types of theatres that make London what it is."
The Lancet
