Theatre
Non profit website to honor her career and legacy.
Jenny Karezi was a great Greek actress and theatrical business woman.
She was born in Athens in Januray 12th 1930, but according to the Dictionary of Greek Actors, written by the actor Theodore Exarhos (1930-2009), she was born in 1934. Her father was a high school principal and her mother a teacher. She spent her school years in Greek-French Nuns’ School in Kalamari in Thessaloniki and in the Greek-French School Saint Joseph in Athens. She spoke fluently French and English. It is worth mentioning that when she announced to her family that she would become an actress, her father left her and her mother and never came back. She never saw him again until 1971 when he was killed in a car accident.
In 1951, when she graduated from the Greek-French School, she played the leading part in Sophocles’ Antigone, which was played in Rex at the time. At the same year she was accepted in the National Theater Drama School, from where she graduated in 1954. Since October 1954, still a student, she started playing in the national theater scene in Kotopouli Theater leading parts with Melina Merkouri, in the plays Beautiful Helen and the House of Bernanda Alba of Lorka, which in fact established her.
Until 1959 she was a major actress in the National Theater, playing Shakespear, Tolstoi, Miller, Andreyef, Terzakis, Roma and Aristophanes. In 1962 she was a leading actress in the Mousouri Theater. Since 1963 she already had her own repertory company, where amongst others she played the plays Kratikes Ypotheseis, Mary Mary, Kathe Tetarti, etc. Since 1968, along with Costas Kazakos, she held plays like Theodora the Great, Aspasia, To Megalo mas Tsirko, O ehthros laos, etc.
Other theatrical plays she has played parts are: Anergia Miden, Dokimasia, Hamlet, Zontano Ptoma, Anthi, King Lear, Zabelaki, Nihta sti Mesogeio, Ena Kouto Koritsi, H kyria den me mellei, Mia Istoria apo to Irkoutsk, Papissa Ioanna, I kyria Proedrou, Polites of B Category, Panagia ton Parision, Theatrinoi, Poios fovatai ti Virginia Wolf?, Eda Gabler, Prosopo me prosopo, Bysinokipos (a great great success), Diamonds and Blues.
In the ancient theater she also played parts in: Antigone, Ekklisiazouses, Lysistrati, Thesmoforiazouses, Klitaimnistra, Midia, Helektra and Oedipus Tyrannous.
She has been granted as an artistic rival to Aliki Vougiouklaki, reliving the artistic rivalry of Kyveli and Marika Kotopouli, without all the political extensions of that conflict..
Text translated from Greek texts, source: http://el.wikipedia.org/