MAMI at Onassis Stegi
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. The new creation of international award-winning Mario Banushi, will be accessible by liminal for three performances on March 6, 7 and 8. Don’t miss the theatrical event of the year!
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.
MAMI
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.
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
Accessibility Credits
Audio Description: Maria Thrasyvoulidi, Alexandra Georgovasili
Touch Tour: Maria Thrasyvoulidi
Interpretation in Greek Sign Language: Androniki Xanthopoulou
Subtitling for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing: Grigoris Stathopoulos
Accessibility Services Coordination: liminal
Useful information
Accessible performances: 6, 7 and 8 March at 20:30
Opening touch guided tour: 19:30
Suitable for ages 16+.
Duration: 70 minutes
Location: Onassis Stegi, 107 Syggrou Avenue, Athens, Greece
Please contact [email protected] or call 213 017 8036 to book universal accessibility tickets.