MAMI

The Greek director Mario Banushi is one of the most exciting new voices in European theatre. In MAMI he has created a wordless, visually stunning, powerfully moving theatrical experience that reaches our deepest layers of memory.

MAMI is the story of mothers, of closeness and letting go, and of what gets passed on. In a non-verbal, visual theatre the director Mario Banushi shapes his personal memories into an intense experience of birth, desire and loss.

Mother – for Mario Banushi origin and absence in one, care and demand, closeness and loss. MAMI is a homage to the women who raised us – and to the ambivalence associated with this legacy.

Mario Banushi was born in Greece but spent part of this early childhood with his grandmother in Albania – for economic reasons a common practice at the time, particularly in families with many children – before returning to Greece at the age of six.

His stage spaces have the feel of other-worldly in-between spaces, in which reality and symbolism are interwoven. His work characteristically dispenses with the spoken word. The narrative is borne by body, gestures, music, light and colour. Everyday materials combine into a poetics of the real, in which bodies become images of great emotional clarity in their raw and vulnerable presence. Strongly Balkan-influenced music intensifies the ritual character of the performance.

In 2026 the 28-year-old director was awarded the Silver Lion at the Venice Biennale.