Karen Kondazian in Tennessee Williams’ Baby Doll

Award winning actor and author Karen Kondazian stars as Aunt Rose Comfort in Tennessee Williams’ play Baby Doll at the Fountain Theatre. Karen Kondazian is no stranger to the works of Tennessee Williams. She has performed in The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore, The Night of the Iguana, Orpheus Descending, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie, The Rose Tattoo, and Sweet Bird of Youth. In 1979 she produced and starred in The Rose Tattoo at the Beverly Hills Playhouse. Tennessee Williams attended one of these performances in 1979. Afterwards he went backstage to meet Karen, and they struck up a friendship that lasted until his death.

Baby Doll is actually a screenplay based on Tennessee Williams one-act play 27 Wagons Full of Cotton which takes place in the Mississippi delta. The film Baby Doll (1956) was directed by Elia Kazan and starred Carrol Baker, Carl Malden, and Eli Wallach. The Fountain theater production is a stage adaptation ­by Pierre Laville and Emily Mann, based on Tennessee Williams’ screenplay and is the West Coast Premiere of this stage adaptation.

Baby Doll is currently in previews July 24-25, July 27-28, and opens Friday, July 29, 8pm and runs Friday-Monday through August 28. For tickets and more information, please contact the Fountain Theater, 5060 Fountain Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90029, (323) 663-1525.