Obsessions

Synopsis

Lora is suffering. Lora is waiting. She lives every feeling to the fullest. She fights depression and doesn't let it defeat her. She talks about her illness like a lover, holding her too tightly, smothering her with too much passion. She's sensual, intelligent, witty. She goes out to hang, to shop, to the park. She often goes to the clinic. And she writes. She writes with passion. She writes with her IV in hand and seeks tenderness, but chooses, in a destructive and risky way, human closeness in its most bizarre forms.

Chronicles:

"From the text, but also from Cerasela Iosifescu's interpretation, a strong character emerges, excellently shaped. The directness of the writing and the surprising humour, despite the details about illness and treatment, ensure a deep impact, as do the many surprise-effect sentences, built on the play of contrasts between the beginning and the end."

Cristina Rusiecki, The writer is crazy?/Observator cultural, no. 833 / 29 July 2016 

"Cerasela Iosifescu is a stretched bow, a vibrating string. Oscillating between the extremes and obsessions of Lore, the actress doses her strengths remarkably, she gradates her means, she naturally changes registers. For an hour, we witness Lore's turmoil and trembling. Without pathos. With lucidity (...) between the catwalk and the projection screen in the background, her life is spent: between oversized pills, between the bathtub and the hospital bed, the mirror as the pole of the self and the red sexy phone-line, the connection with the outside."

Maria Zărnescu, Necessary "Obsessions", yorick.ro, Nr. 319 / 29 iunie 2016

"The Obsession show is a staging of the abyss. And who knows more about the abyss than a bipolar? […] All the desperation, in some places diabolical, of the patient, who wants to die and cannot die, is transfigured by Cerasela Iosifescu, who sometimes seems to break down on stage, she plays the character's bipolarity so well. The role, of great difficulty and complexity, through the paroxysm of emotions, through the duality of extreme states - from joy, to anger and sadness - is a test for more than an hour, for any actress. Cerasela Iosifescu throws herself, with all her being, into this challenge and passes, movingly, throughout this role."

Simona Chițan / "Obsessions" of a bipolar. Cerasela Iosifescu plays the extremes of affectivity / Adevărul.ro / May 20, 2016

"Cerasela Iosifescu composes one of the most remarkable performances. Margarita Karapanou is the favorite writer of Yannis Paraskevopoulos, and Cerasela Iosifescu, the favorite actress, a "happy" meeting and several perfect creations (Medea, Irina Arkadina), the text is written for her, and Obsesii takes their collaboration to another level, a provocative and assumed monologue-testimony of existence, marked by a mental illness. The biographical and literary fragments are transformed through directorial solutions, through interpretation, through the capture of extremes.(...) Lora changes several masks and tries on several roles, builds a moving portrait of herself, in divergent positions with the image of her mother around whom she embroiders a whole mythology. The mother she is looking for, waiting to pick her up from the clinic, whom she accuses of abandoning her, or who, on the contrary, suffocates her, takes her clothes, her perfume, meddles in her love life. It's a love&hate relationship, which eludes fitting into a certain category, perhaps the most expressive image is the mutilated doll, later substituted for the mutilated figure of the mother, "Mom, I love you! I would like you to cut off your hands and feet, so that you can fit in my heart".

Daniela Firescu, All about mother, Ramuri magazine, no. 10/2019

"Claudiu Sfirschi-Lăudat's dramatization starts from the translation project of Margarita Karapanou's autobiographical volume Da and manages to maintain the distinctive note of her writings, disordered, out of control, in which fragments, fragments of text are assembled and what seemed a monologue develops dramatic tension, conflict, controversy. The result is an extremely exciting score for an actress - Cerasela Iosifescu composes one of the most remarkable performances. Margarita Karapanou is Yiannis Paraskevopoulos' favorite writer, and Cerasela Iosifescu, his favorite actress, a "happy" meeting and several perfect creations (Medea, Irina Arkadina), the text is written for her, and Obsesii takes their collaboration to another level, a provocative and assumed monologue-testimony of existence, marked by a mental illness."

All about mother, review by Daniela Firescu, Ramuri, no. 10/2019