RAGADA

One of the most exciting voices of European theatre returns to his very first show, reworked. RAGADA is Mario Banushi's first part of his trilogy about loss and family. The title refers to the Greek word for stretch marks: scars that form during growth. They fade with time, but never disappear.

In an intimate, domestic setting for a small audience, a visual, sensual and dreamlike world unveils itself. Banushi, who made a strong impression at Noorderzon last year and across Europe with MAMI, returns once again to themes of motherhood, birth and the vulnerability woven into them. Drawing from his own family history of migration, from Albania to Greece, he weaves personal and collective memories together.

With a strong focus on the visibility of women, he creates images that are both tender and raw. RAGADA is a co-production of Grand Theatre/Noorderzon, the Venice Biennale and Onassis Athens. At the Venice Biennale, Banushi received the prestigious Silver Lion as one of the most significant and intriguing voices in contemporary theatre.

Mario Banushi was born in 1998 and lived in Albania until the age of six, before moving permanently to Greece. He studied acting at the theatre school of the Athens Conservatoire, where he graduated in 2020. That same year he made his first short film Pranvera, with which he participated in the 2021 Tirana International Film Festival.

His first work as a theatre director was the performance RAGADA, created and presented in a house in Athens during the pandemic lockdowns. His next work, Goodbye, Lindita, premiered in 2023 on the experimental stage of the National Theatre of Greece, quickly gathering an enthusiastic audience and glowing reviews, resulting in consistently sold-out performances and international invitations from respected festivals and theatres, including Internationaal Theater Amsterdam, the Adelaide Festival in Australia and Bitef in Belgrade, where Mario received the Bitef Special Award "Jovan Ćirilov" and the Politika Award for Best Director. His third work, Taverna Miresia, Mario Bella Anastasia, was presented in July 2023 at the Athens Epidaurus Festival for three sold-out performances and has been touring internationally since early 2024. Mario Banushi's trilogy is commonly referred to by the title Romance Familiare, meaning family novels in Albanian.