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“I never did this for money. Money was of no interest for me. I did it because I wanted to play in front of an audience”, this was her motto throughout her whole life!
“Jenny Karezi might be, my number 2 favorite actress after E. Labetti… especially from what I have read about her, she was a deeply honest person, a fighting character, but most of all she was exquisite as an actress in comedy and in drama equally, which is a bit difficult to achieve.
Jenny was born in January 12th 1936, even if it is claimed that she was born in 1930. Her real name is Eugenia Karpouzi. Her father was a high school principal and her mother a teacher. Her father abandoned them both, when she declared that she wanted to be an actress. She never saw him again until 1971, when he died in a car accident. Her love for theater begun in her childhood, when she participated in several school performances. In 1951, in the age of 15, she started her studies in the National Theater Drama School. In 1954 she took her first steps in theater, right “next” to Melina Merkouri. After National Theater she decided to create her own theater company, which met great success.
A play which deprived her by her freedom for 3 months was Our Big Circus, in 1973. In this play, via satirical and drama acts and songs, you could have a review in Greece’s history since the Turkish Occupation, King Otto and the rest of the governors of independent Greece until the Minor Asia Disaster, the B’ World War and the -by then- present. Nikos Xylouris was also participating in the play. The play was greatly greeted by the Athenian audience and, due to the viewers’ turnout, the performances in Athinaion were afterwards characterized as the most crowded –until Polytehneio– political indignation meetings. Soon enough the Junta censors realized that the play was not just a comedy and that it passed anti-dictatorship messages and, in this way, only in their own will they forbidden the performances. So the protagonists of the play were arrested due to the content of the play”.
Text translated from Greek, source: http://theatrelovers.pblogs.gr/2010/12/tzenh-karezh.html