Sirenos’26: MAMI

“MAMI” by Mario Banushi

“My mother brought into this world not only me, but also thousands of other children. She was a midwife. This performance is a hymn to all the women who raised us.”
— Mario Banushi

At just 26 years old, Albanian-Greek theatre director Mario Banushi has already become one of the most internationally recognised young theatre creators, awarded the Venice Biennale Silver Lion (2026) and the Greek Theatre Critics Association New Creator Award (2025).

His fourth stage work, “MAMI”, is a visually driven theatrical piece supported by major European institutions, including the Avignon Festival, which included it in its main program.

Banushi’s artistic language is deeply visual and non-verbal, built from dreamlike imagery, memory, folklore, and emotional landscapes inspired by personal experience. His work often resembles moving paintings, where sound, bodies, and symbolic scenes create an immersive sensory world.

“MAMI” continues a thematic trilogy that includes “Goodbye, Lindita” and “Taverna Miresia”, both dealing with grief and maternal loss. In contrast, this new work becomes a celebration of motherhood — an ode to women, care, and the fragile bond between mother and child.

The performance explores birth as “love in reverse,” reflecting on memory, separation, and the invisible emotional ties that shape identity. Through poetic visual storytelling, Banushi transforms the stage into a ritual space honoring motherhood in all its complexity — tenderness, pain, myth, and gratitude.