Mario Banushi - Chapter 3: Taverna Miresia. Mario, Bella, Anastasia.

Taverna Miresia is the final chapter of the trilogy by Mario Banushi, in which the neon sign of a restaurant in a suburb of Tirana casts light on the story of a family. An unexpected event, taking place precisely beneath that sign, has a decisive impact on Mario’s life. Years later, now an adult, the director Mario Banushi brings that same sign from Tirana to Athens, placing it at the centre of the world created on stage.

With his memories—shards of the past—he confronts the absence of his recently deceased father, the cook and soul of the taverna, who each evening welcomed guests with an ethos of kindness (miresia in Albanian). As the performance unfolds, the neon sign becomes a vehicle of revelation, casting light on a constellation of unspoken feelings, fragments of memory, the poetry of what remains unsaid.

It is an act of love: his profound farewell to his father, the keeper of the tavern’s secrets, and a delicate embrace of adulthood, among the existential enigmas that accompany the passage of the years.