Onassis
What’s On
Theater

MAMI | Mario Banushi

Dates

Prices

10 — 28 €

Location

Onassis Stegi
Get Tickets

Time & Date

Day
Time
Venue
Day
Thursday - Saturday
Time
20:30
Venue
Main Stage
Day
Sunday
Time
14:00
Venue
Main Stage

Tickets

Type
Price
Full price
18 €, 22 €, 28 €
Reduced, Friend & Neighborhood residents
20% discount on the regular ticket price
Groups 5-9 people
10% discount on the regular ticket price
Unemployed, People with disabilities, Companions
10 €
Restricted View Ticket
50% discount on the regular ticket price

Group ticket reservations at groupsales@onassis.org

Onassis Stegi Friends presale - Phase 1: from 20 SEP 2024, 17:00
General presale - Phase 1: from 23 SEP 2024, 17:00

The number of tickets available in this first phase of presale is limited. The second phase of presale for all tickets starts on January 9 for Onassis Stegi Friends and on January 16, 2025 for the general public.

Information

Accessibility services

The performances on March 6th, 7th and 8th will be held according to universal accessibility standards in collaboration with the cultural organization liminal. In particular, they include interpretation in Greek sign language and Greek surtitles for deaf and hard of hearing people, as well as tactile tours of the stage and audio descriptions for people with visual impairment.

Accessibility services are provided with the support of the Europe Beyond Access network, co-funded by the "Creative Europe" program of the European Union.

Please contact infotickets@onassis.org or call 213 017 8036 to book universal accessibility tickets.

"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.

Photo: Mario Banushi

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.

“I have always said that birth is love in reverse.”

-Mario Banushi

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.

Photo: Stephie Grape, Concept: Mario Banushi

Director's note
“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

Credits

  • 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

    Christos Christopoulos – TooFarEast

  • Auditions & Residency Coordinator

    Konstantina Douka Gkosi – TooFarEast

  • In collaboration with

    OMAZ civic non-profit company

  • Commissioned and Produced by

    Onassis Stegi

  • Co-produced by

    FOG Festival / Triennale Milano [IT], 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.

Sponsors

Read more

More in:

Premiere

Theater

Oxygen | George Koutlis

Onassis Stegi

Text: Ivan Vyrypaev
Premiere

Theater

Oxygen | George Koutlis

Onassis Stegi

Text: Ivan Vyrypaev