Karen Kondazian

Actress, Producer, Author

Spring 1958 Graduate

        Karen Kondazian, known at Lincoln High as Karen Kondan, graduated under the supportive wing of drama teacher William Witt, the shy Kondan, starred in many of the school plays, including The Glass Menagerie, Wonderful Town, and Stagedoor.

        After graduating from college (San Francisco State and The University of Vienna) she went to New York and began her acting career in Michael Cacoyannis' award winning production of The Trojan Woman.

        Her next adventure was being chosen, one of four Americans, (along with the young actor Stacey Keach) to be a part of a special acting program at The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts for a year.

        Leaving London, she moved to Hollywood, and there guest starred in many television shows including Hill Street Blues, Murder She Wrote, Moonlighting, Cagney And Lacey, and the film Yes Giorgio, with Luciano Pavorotti. In 1981, she starred as a series regular in CBS's Shannon, which was filmed in San Francisco.

        Her stage work has included winning a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for her acting in Tennessee Williams' The Rose Tatoo, in which her work, both as an actor and producer, so impressed Mr. Williams that he offered her carte blanche to produce any of his plays in his lifetime. She then produced and starred in Williams' Sweet Bird of Youth with a young actor named Ed Harris. In 1991, she was nominated for a San Francisco Drama Critics Circle Award, playing Martha in The Berkeley Rep's Whose Afraid of Virgina Woolf.

        Recently, as a guest, she starred on Frazier, NYPD Blue, and TNT's movie, James Dean .

        In 1994 she became a journalist and writer as well as actress. Her weekly column in BackStageWest/Drama-Logue was made into a book and published in 2000. "The Actors Encyclopedia of Casting Directors" has been a best seller in Los Angeles. Richard Dreyfuss wrote the Preface, with over 100 conversations with casting directors, directors (John Woo, James Cameron) and famous acting teachers. She now writes a column for the magazine LA Stage.

        Kondazian is a life time member of the Actors Studio, a member of the Hollywood Women's Press Club, The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (she votes for the Emmy's) and is on the Executive Board of Theater, LA.

         In recognition of her many accomplishments, Karen was inducted into the Abraham Lincoln High School Wall of Fame in May 2003.