Galia Yishai (1950-2020) was an actor, singer, and director. On completing her miliary service singing and performing with the IDF’s Central Command Troupe (‘Lehakat Pikud Merkaz’), director and playwright Nissim Aloni asked her to join the cast of his play, Napoleon – Dead or Live, that was having a run at the Bimot (‘stages’) Theatre at the time. Yishai later moved to Habima National Theatre where she went on to feature in dozens of plays including Peer Gynt and Relatively Speaking. Yishai appeared on just every repertoire theatre stage in Israel, whilst simultaneously teaching theatre, and directing at multiple institutions. Israeli children of the ‘80s and ‘90s (and their parents) will fondly remember her as the puppeteer and voice of Pingy the Penguin in the original run of the classic children’s programme Nice Butterfly (‘parpar nechmad’) (1988-1997).
Highlights of her television credits include I Sang to you, my Country (‘sharti lach artzi’), The Whistling Gypsy Club, Telepele (‘tele-wonder’), Shmil the Cat Club, Ramat Aviv Gimmel, Jerusalem Mixed Grill (‘meorav yerushalmi’), Life isn’t Everything (‘ha-chaim ze lo ha-kol’), When will we Kiss, Weeping Susannah, Miller Junction (‘tzomet Miller’), Irreversible, The Good Cop (‘hashoter hatov’), Dumb, Cash Register, and Batel the Virgin (an Israeli remake of Jane the Virgin.)
Highlights of her film credits include The Highway Queen (Menahem Golan, 1971), Am Yisrael Hai (Assi Dayan, 1981), Hunting Elephants (Reshef Levi, 2013), and Inertia (Idan Haguel, 2015).
