MAMI has a rather complex starting point. It is based on the relationship that, as a child, connected you to both your mother and your grandmother. Can you tell us more about that?
Mario Banushi: MAMI isn’t about my mother or grandmother specifically, but it’s inspired by the deep bonds I had with them and with the other women who raised me —because, as it happens, I was always raised by women. My parents separated before I was born and, when I was one year old, my mother found herself in a financially precarious situation. She didn’t have the means to raise my two sisters and me. She had to send me to my grandmother in Albania, where I stayed until I was six, before returning to Athens. That’s how I ended up with two mothers: my biological mother and my grandmother, whom I called mami until I was thirteen. And then there was my father’s new wife, my stepmother, whom I also called by that name. There is a certain irony to the fact that the word mother has always referred to several people for me. The show is inhabited by these multiple mother figures: young, gentle, angry, nurturing, aging and who needs to be looked after... I wouldn’t say they’re different types. I’d rather speak of different moments: like a photo album you flip through, like the story of a woman seen through the eyes of a little boy who doesn’t want to idealise her, just observe her.
How did the project take shape? How did you share such intimate, memory-based material with the performers?
I began by sharing personal thoughts and inspirations with the performers. I explained to them why I wanted to create this show and what it meant to me. I told them memories of my mother, who was a midwife in Albania. Her job was to help other women give birth, to bring children into the world. What does the moment of birth look like? What does it feel like to hear a baby’s first cry? I grew up surrounded by these stories. MAMI is about birth and life, whereas my previous works were more about pain and grief. I told the performers about how I was raised, how painful it was to leave Albania. Then I started to ask questions. I wanted to know what the word Mami meant to them, what emotional weight it carried. During rehearsals, I like to create a nurturing atmosphere, to allow the performers to truly let go of where they come from so that we can create images or moments together that I later incorporate into the show.
How do you create these images?
I have to say, I don’t really improvise that much. Before we begin rehearsing, I like to draw a lot, making sketches that I then try to bring to life on stage. For instance, I’ll be home and I’ll draw a mother breastfeeding her child while singing a lullaby. Then, during rehearsals, I guide the performers step by step in the direction I have in mind. Once they’ve created those images, I add, subtract, change little details... The mother feeding her son might become a son feeding his mother... Who is taking care of whom? It’s a complex and mysterious relationship, one we will never fully understand: the ties we try to untangle here link life back to its roots. For some projects, rehearsals might begin with a reading of the text they will be performing. But here, our book is immaterial: it’s the encounter with ourselves. We dig within ourselves to uncover stories and words we then share with the other performers. It’s the book of our lives, intimate and fragile, that each of us must open with great care.
Your artistic language blends theatre and dance with a strong plastic dimension…
I guess my artistic language is deeply influenced by my Albanian roots, by the memories I’ve kept of that country. My shows are filled with sensations, colours, scents... Even if they don’t start from a text, they always tell a story. Beauty moves me when it goes hand in hand with the emotions being expressed. I try to understand how a performance can trigger a powerful emotional response. It’s like an epiphany—do you see what I mean? When you look at a work of art, it can draw you in like a magnet. But that magnet must have a soul. It’s not just a display case.
You create landscape-like forms that often seem to exist outside of time… Is that also a result of your personal history?
I’m only twenty-six, but I sometimes have the strange impression that I have the imagination of a sixty- or seventy-year-old man. It probably has to do with the context in which I grew up, on the outskirts of a city, away from the centre, in what felt like a kind of farm, with my mother and grandmother. It felt like a different era, with men who would bring water and milk every day... I remember our small family living in that little house. We didn’t have much money. My grandmother was the centre of our domestic life and would do the cooking. I guess that left a deep mark on me. I’m very sensitive to social rituals: weddings, baptisms, funerals... What lies behind these events? What stories are hidden behind these ceremonies? In a rather unusual way, my work blends a certain sense of modernity with almost ancestral traditions.
Another distinctive aspect of your work is that you bring together performers of all ages and backgrounds on stage…
Yes, I like surrounding myself with people young and old, be they actors, dancers, singers, or non-professional performers who might be on stage for the first time... It’s very inspiring for me. I love it when cultures mix, when people are curious about one another, when they have the desire to step out of their comfort zone. I like asking actors to dance and dancers to act. We are all multifaceted beings. Look at me: I’m a director, but I also do photography, ceramics, and drawing...
Interview conducted by Simon Hatab in January 2025.