“MAMI” by Mario Banushi: An Unholy Shrine to the Mother-Child Relationship

“My mother brought me into the world along with thousands of other children. She was a midwife“. MAMI, a hymn for all the women who raised us

Creator of a stage language all his own, the 26-year-old Albanian-born Mario Banushi is already touring the world with his first plays, “Goodbye, Lindita” (2023) and “Taverna Miresia—Mario, Bella, Anastasia” (2023), and is hailed internationally as the wunderkind of Greek theater. If, in his previous works, the theme was mourning, in “MAMI” it is the source of life. For in Banushi’s personal mythology, the almost homonymous words “mami” and “mam” become identical. Mami, as in mother. Mam, as in food. One pulls out one’s heart and offers it to another like a warm loaf of bread.

Drawing inspiration from personal experiences, Banushi creates an unholy shrine to the mother-child relationship. To celebrate it. To exorcise it. To fill it with vows and curses. To fall in love with it. For, as he himself notes, “I have always said that birth is love in reverse.”

The stage becomes a landscape of memory. As eerie as it is familiar. The performers, immersed in silence, create moments of profound emotion and urge us to recognize and confront our own memories, our own relationships, and the emotional legacy we carry.

This breakout director’s new creation is a visual poem about the mother-child relationship. A show that is a tribute to the women who nurtured us.

“When I was about a year old, my mother had to leave me with my grandmother in Albania and go away. Until I was thirteen, I called my grandmother ‘mami.’ When my mother took me with her to Athens, I grew up in the apartment above the bakery where she worked, with the smell of freshly baked bread. I grew up around many women. I grew up around young women and old women. I grew up with more than one mother. This show is for them: a wish, a prayer to the weight the word ‘mom’ carries for both the one who hears it and the one who says it. Who takes care of whom—I never understood this complicated relationship. And I never will. But I’m trying to unravel it like an umbilical cord, like the viscera that connects life to its roots.” -Mario Banushi

Information

Conceived and Directed by Mario Banushi

With: Vasiliki Driva, Dimitris Lagos, Eftychia Stefanou / Ilia Koukouzeli, Angeliki Stellatou, Fotis Stratigos, and Panagiota Υiagli

Set & Costume Design: Sotiris Melanos

Original Music & Sound Design: Jeph Vanger

Lighting Design and Associate Dramaturg: Stephanos Droussiotis

Artistic Collaborators: Aimilios Arapoglou, Thanasis Deligiannis

Assistant Director: Theodora Patiti

International Relations & Tour Management: Nikos Mavrakis

Production Management: Rena Andreadaki & Christos Christopoulos – TooFarEast

Line Production: Ioanna Papakosta – TooFarEast

Auditions & Residency Coordinator: Konstantina Douka Gkosi – TooFarEast

Tour Lighting design: Marietta Pavlaki

Set assistant: Sofia Theodorou

Costumes assistant: Nikoleta Anastasiadou

In collaboration with

OMAZ civic non-profit company

Commissioned and Produced by Onassis Stegi

Co-produced by Berliner Festspiele [DE], FOG Festival / Triennale Milano [IT], & Espoo Theatre [FI], Noorderzon Festival / Grand Theatre Groningen [NL] & more to be announced soon

Initial research & development were made possible with the support of the Onassis AiR Dramaturgy Fellowship [GR] and the Centre Culturel Hellénique—Paris [FR]

Supported by the Onassis Stegi “Outward Turn” Cultural Export Program.