Theater

MAMI | Mario Banushi

Dates

Age guidance

16+

Prices

10 — 28 €

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 Friends presale - Phase 2: from 9 JAN 2025, 17:00
General presale - Phase 2: from 16 JAN 2025, 17:00

The first presale phase of a limited number of tickets, that started on September 20 for Onassis Friends and on September 23 for the general public, has been completed.

Information

Performance cancellation 28.02.25

On Friday, February 28th, a day of remembrance and collective mourning, Onassis Stegi will be closed. Therefore, the scheduled performance of “MAMI” will not take place. The Onassis Stegi box office will contact all ticket holders directly to handle their reservations. For any further information, please contact us at 2192191000 or by email at infotickets@onassis.org.

Duration

70 minutes

Age guidance

The performance includes nudity and is suitable for ages 16 and up.

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 Greek surtitles for deaf and hard of hearing people, as well as tactile tours of the stage and audio descriptions for people who are blind or have low vision.

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: Andreas Simopoulos

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

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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: Andreas Simopoulos

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

Photo: Andreas Simopoulos

Read more

–Mario Banushi has made an impressive entrance into the theater world over the previous two years of being active in the field. Following his first play, “Ragada” (2022), he collaborated with notable organizations in Greece and composed two works that helped him gain international recognition: “Goodbye, Lindita” (National Theatre of Greece, 2023) και “Taverna Miresia―Mario, Bella, Anastasia” (Athens and Epidaurus Festival, 2023). From 2023 to date, his works have been presented in over ten countries, from Germany to Australia and from Italy to Sweden, at major festivals such as Festival de Otoño (Madrid, Spain), Teszt Festival (Timisoara, Romania), Adelaide Festival (Australia), Brandhaarden Festival at the International Theatre Amsterdam (The Netherlands), Fast Forward Festival (Dresden, Germany), and BITEF (Belgrade, Serbia).

–As an Onassis AiR Dramaturgy Fellow in the 2023–24 season, Mario Banushi, after an existential trilogy about life and death, began an investigation into folk traditions about motherhood that would inspire his work, “MAMI,” and presented the performance “Mam, I Remember Everything” during the 12th Onassis AiR Open Day. There, the images of mother, food, ritual, care, and love found a way to powerfully portray a dream while preserving its raw material.

–A recurring theme in Mario Banushi’s performances is the home, the roof, the mother’s nest. His works, “Ragada,” “Goodbye, Lindita,” and “Taverna Miresia―Mario, Bella, Anastasia,” make spectators feel at home. Objects that we are all familiar with are transformed and reused. No matter how much the characters try to escape reality, they remain within the four walls. The interior of the house alters and takes the form of a tomb or shrine. In “MAMI,” Mario Banushi turns outside the house for the first time. However, the setting remains familiar. We are in the countryside, outside the house and by the road, lit only by an electric light bulb. In that familiar landscape, we transition from the confined system of the home and family to the outer world, the surroundings.

Photo: Stephie Grape, Concept: Mario Banushi

–Reviews about Mario Banushi:

“Banushi makes great play of the way that families use telly-watching to nullify their emotions.”
– Michael Billington, The Guardian, April 6, 2023

“Mario Banushi, a Greek playwright of Albanian heritage, is a rising star who represents the new face of Greek theatre.”
– Arifa Akbar, The Guardian, July 28, 2023

“Mario Banushi is one of the most important new voices in European theatre.”
– Lea Loeb, TheaterSpektakel, August 2024

“And, from Greece, comes director Mario Banushi with his play-without-words ‘Goodbye, Lindita,’ which has been hailed as the work of the next Romeo Castellucci.”
– Murray Bramwell, InReview, October 25, 2023

“[Mario Banushi’s directorial manuscript] brings emotional, dreamlike and poetically expressive glimpses of death and of facing it."
–Politika award jury, October 2023

Credits

  • Conceived and Directed by

    Mario Banushi

  • With

    Vasiliki Driva / Katerina Kristo, 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

  • Tour Sound Engineer

    Kostas Chaidos

  • Set assistant

    Sofia Theodorou

  • Costumes assistant

    Nikoleta Anastasiadou

  • Set Construction

    Michalis Lagkouvardos

  • Special Constructions

    Alahouzos Brothers, Alexandros Loggos

  • Special Lighting Constructions

    Giorgos Ierapetritis

  • Rehearsal Technical Coordination

    Aristidis Kreatsoulas - TooFarEast

  • Rehearsal Electrician

    Konstantinos Mavrantzas

  • Rehearsal Technical Support

    Stefanos Ntaoulas, Iason Papantoniou, Grigoris Zkeris, Paris Asimakopoulos

  • In collaboration with

    OMAZ civic non-profit company

  • Commissioned and Produced by

    Onassis Stegi

  • Co-produced by

    Berliner Festspiele [DE], Odéon – Théâtre de l'Europe [FR], FOG Festival / Triennale Milano Teatro [IT], & Espoo Theatre [FI], Grec Festival Barcelona [ES], Noorderzon Festival / Grand Theatre Groningen [NL] & more to be announced soon

  • Special thanks

    Aliki Atsalaki, Sozon Bessis / Bessis Textiles, Marissa Bili, Eleni Choumou, Panos Delinikopoulos, Giorgos Koutlis, Katerina Kristo, Eirini Kyriakou, Katerina Liatsou, Julian Mommert, Dimitris Papaioannou, Petros Papazisis, Giorgos Sofikitis, Theodoros Terzopoulos, Pinelοpi Tsoutsouva, Elena Viseri, Chryssi Vidalaki, Mark Yeoman & Raydun Bolk and the team of Grand Theatre Groningen, all the participants of the audition workshops.

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.