Creator of a stage language all his own, Albanian-born Mario Banushi has been 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. In Banushi’s personal mythology, the almost identical words “mami” and “mam” become one: 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. 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 freight of the emotional legacy we carry. Recently presented to rave reviews at the Avignon Festival, MAMI is a visual poem about the mother-child relationship, a show that serves as a tribute to the women who nurtured us.
Read more about Mario Banushi’s work at the Onassis Foundation, where he has been an Onassis AiR Fellow for 2023-24 through the Dramaturgy Fellowship and for 2025-26 in the framework of Onassis AiR’s collaboration with NTCH.
Read more about Under the Radar.
GET INTO IT
GET INTO IT
GET THEE TO THE LIBRARY
GET THEE TO THE LIBRARY
Recommended readings to get you in gear for the show.
- Georgina Bodoni, Marissa McClure Sweeny, Elizabeth Garber, Shana Cinquemani, editors. Transformative Motherscholarship and Art: Public Pedagogies of Childhood (2025).
- Anna Chiara Corradino and Alessandro Grilli, editors. The Monstrous Mother: Unexpected Evil in Myth, Literature, and Popular Culture (2025).
- Anne Sorbie and Heidi Grogan, editors. (M)Othering: An Anthology (2022).
- Sara Williams. The Maternal Gaze in the Gothic (2025).
- Rachel Williamson. 21st-Century Narratives of Maternal Ambivalence (2023).
READ ALL ABOUT IT
READ ALL ABOUT IT
“The Balkans aren’t just one thing; they’re many things.”
“MAMI is a performance, another creation of mine, another “experiment,” a personal artistic exploration. Maybe it’s also a continuation of my previous works.”
Review: MAMI
Banushi has been the centre of attention in the Greek theatre scene, and increasingly on the international stage, in recent years and his works deserve it.
Interview with Mario Banushi
“My childhood was shaped by women—my mother, my sisters, my aunts—who were the heart of my world.”
Interview with Mario Banushi
“The show is inhabited by these multiple mother figures: young, gentle, angry, nurturing, aging and who needs to be looked after.”
Mario Banushi: There are some feelings you can’t convey with a lot of words
His work merges religious and folkloric imagery, the domestic and the supernatural.
In the Dollhouses of Mario Banushi
In the world of Mario Banushi, in that world where everything starts from house and home and everything seems so familiar, the unfamiliar also exists as something fundamental, adhesive and integral.
EXTRA CREDIT
EXTRA CREDIT
RELATED EVENTS
RELATED EVENTS
- Wed Jan 7 – Sat Jan 10, 2026
Mario Banushi: MAMI
- Skirball Presents
- Theater
- Under the Radar Festival