Nooria

Nooria is about a female corpse-washer, whose work is to wash dead female bodies before they are placed in their graves. Nooria meets Death as a male figure and, through an external monologue, starts a ghostly dialogue. Nooria recalls milestones in her life: her marriage to a soldier who went to the Iraq–Iran War and never came back; the financial hardship that she and her young child suffered during the economic sanctions; the patriarchal and systematic oppression practised upon her as a lonely woman with a young child. Nooria was not aware that Death has come not for her but for her son, as he was about to die in a bomb explosion. In a fantastical move, Nooria decides to take her son back into her belly to protect him from Death, and covers her body with one of the shrouds around her. The play utilises shadow theatre as a background to Nooria’s grotesque monologue, and the choreographers behind the huge translucent screens reflect her frustration, anxiety and fear.