Sirenos'26: MAMI

MAMI (Greece)

Premiere: 02/06/2025
Producer: Onassis Stegi

CREATIVE TEAM:
Writer and Director: Mario Banushi
Cast: Vasiliki Driva, Dimitris Lagos, Eftychia Stefanou, Angeliki Stellatou, Ennea Vangelis and Panagiota Υiagli
Scenography and costumes: Sotiris Melanos
Composer and sound designer: Jeph Vanger
Lighting artist and consulting dramaturg: Stephanos Droussiotis
Co-creators: Aimilios Arapoglou, Thanasis Deligiannis
Assistant director: Theodora Patiti

My mother brought into this world no only me, but also accompanied thousands of other children. She was a bystander. This performance is a hymn to all the women who raised us.
-Mario Banushi

26-year-old Albanian-Greek theater director Mario Banushi became one of the youngest creators to be recognized with such important prizes as the Silver Lion of the Venice Biennale (2026) and the New Theater Creator Award of the Greek Theater Critics Association (2025).

MAMI is only the fourth production of this creator who develops a unique visual stage language, but among his co-producers are the largest and most important European theater organizations, one of them is the Avignon Festival in France, which included the work in the main program.

On the stage, Mario Banushi has become interior landscapes that take you to a world full of primordial life, of dreamlike creatures, mysticism, images, sounds and often reminds of Balkan folklore. Banushi's source of creative inspiration is personal memories, nostalgia, dreams and emotions, visions with which he embroiders the dramaturgy of the play. Mario Banushi's first two productions, "Goodbye, Lindita" and "Taverna Miresia", were like islands of mourning, in which he used mystical visual metaphors to talk about the early loss of his mother. The play MAMI is already an ode to beauty, motherhood, and love. Banushi's performance is like building a temple to honor the imperfect relationship between mother and child. It is important for him to celebrate this relationship, sanctify it, fill it with vows and curses, experience it and love it anew. According to the creator, he sees birth as "love in reverse".

When I was one, my mother had to leave and left me with my grandmother in Albania. I called my grandmother "mom" until I was thirteen. When my mother took me to Athens, we lived in an apartment above the bakery where she worked, and there was a constant smell of fresh bread. I grew up surrounded by many women, young and old. I had more than one mother. I dedicate this performance to all of them - as a wish and thanks for the weight that the word "mother" has for both the one who says it and the one to whom it is said. I never understood this complex relationship - who cares for whom? And I won't understand. But I try to unwrap it like a umbilical cord, like the ties that connect life to its roots.
-Mario Banushi

In collaboration with: OMAZ Civic Non-Profit Company
Producer: Onassis Stegi [GR]
Co-producers: Berliner Festspiele [DE], Odéon – Théâtre de l’Europe [FR], FOG festival / Triennale Milano Teatro [IT], & Espoo Theater [FI], Festival d’Avignon [FR], Grec Festival Barcelona [ES], Théâtre de Liège [BE], Noorderzon Festival / Grand Theater Groningen [NL]

The creation of the play started in the residences: Onassis AiR Fellowship [GR], Center Culturel Hellénique - Paris [FR]
The showing of the play in Lithuania is supported by: Onassis Stegi Touring Program
Spektaklio the creation was supported by: the Greek Ministry of Culture

Mario Banushi

Mario Bannushi is a young but already recognized theater director, whose work includes themes of intimacy and mythology, memory and family, revealed through the visual non-verbal language of the stage.

Banushi was born in Greece, grew up in Albania until he was six, later returned to Greece, so his the creative world speaks of different contexts and changing family narratives, all conveyed by a rich vocabulary of theatrical visuals. The performances unfold like paintings in which the audience gets to know the visual poetry of the theater and the emotional depth of the works through their senses.

The director's first work "Ragada" was created during the pandemic and adapted to a non-theatrical space. With his second work, Goodbye, Lindita, Banushi gained recognition in Greece and beyond, the production still touring festivals on different continents. The subsequent premiere "Taverna Miresia - Mario Bella Anastasia" was a similar success - thematically related, these two works are often presented together - they have already visited many festivals in Europe, as well as North America and Asia.

On the AllEvents portal you can always Buy tickets to an event Theater Sirenos'26: MAMI, Vilnius, Lietuvos nacionalinis dramos teatras October 02

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