What do those who worked with her or met with her remember that Papa hid from Irini? What did those who looked at her form and soul see?

If anyone asks her Tatyana Papamoshova mention a moment from her collaboration with her Irini Papa in Iphigenia (1977) by Michalis Kakoyannis, the actress who starred in the film at the age of 13 will hesitate for a while, but soon she will describe an older woman who left her mark on things, who was not just a beautiful Greek woman and a good actress, but combining such virtues with mind and will. “He was a free man” says “K” Tatyana Papamoshova, “who challenged facts and conventions in art and in life. Even the fact that he wanted to rehearse barefoot means something: a person who wants to feel the ground under his feet.

Papamoschu also speaks of a warm, generous, and simple person: “I remember now,” she recalls, “how I said to her, ‘Oh, what a beautiful thing you have on! and she replies “take it!” I give it to you!” It was a generosity that seems to be rare among people. “Dad in particular was a goddess,” the actress continues, “not only because of her acting skills or her figure, a perfect Greek woman. It was also her terrible personality, the personality of a relentless person who never compromised.It was her wonderful mind, the fact that she was a challenger, open to challenges and discussions.I remember her endless conversations at that time with Kostas Kazakos (he played Agamemnon in “Iphigenia”) and with Kakoyannis, where it was clear that they were interested in the search for things, art, but also life.

“He was a free man,” Tatyana Papamoshchova, who worked with Irini Papa in M. Kakoyanni’s Iphigenia, tells K.

Painter, stage designer and costume designer Yannis Metzikoff adds personality to Irene Papa’s portrait. “I will always remember her as a wild, beautiful, black horse,” he tells us. “As a person with a vision who wanted to bring the best theater educators to our country, and that is why she put all her strength into building this special place (and other events of the National Theatre). He was tortured to achieve this. But, of course, both then and now, Greece is a country where such visions hardly find any ground. Irini Papa,” continues Yannis Metzikof, “was a very serious chapter in my life. A story that taught me a lot and left an indelible mark on me. As a young man – when I first met her – I learned from her that we can walk many miles with our hearts, develop, always within the limits of our decisions and our honest goals. He had an incredible passion for life. Even today, I very often refer to her own words when teaching young children.”

After all the above, the description of Irini Papa by Alekos Sakellarios seems more appropriate, who notes in his autobiography that when he once saw her in the Syntagma, it was “as if the caryatid had come to life.” For his part, Michel Dimopoulos, for a number of years artistic director of the Thessaloniki Film Festival, in an edition of the organization that accompanied the cinematic tribute to Irini Pape in 1997, wrote that “if Melina represented the passion of love, and Paxinou the moral breadth of the place, dad is his depth, his pride and his tragedy.”

And Kostas Georgusopoulos, in a text found in the same edition, wrote: “There is something earthly in this wonderful beauty, carved as if on a black tree. Then you think that she escaped from the Attic vases, one as the pinnacle of a tragic dance, another as a nymph of a cool spring, a third as an obituary in a funerary hydria.