KAREN SUNDE

Ms Sunde stopped acting to write full-time in 1985. By then, she’d performed 60-some roles Off Broadway at CSC Repertory, including Clytemnestra in The Orestia, Portia in Merchant of Venice, Antigone (both Anouilh’s and Sophocles’), the Madwoman of Chaillot, Isabella in Measure for Measure, Viola in Twelfth Night, Hedda Gabler (3 seasons), and Ruth in The Homecoming (4 seasons).

From Reviews:

HEDDA GABLER
“As Hedda, the company’s leading actress, Karen Sunde, finds her best role yet – willful, spirited, trapped, malicious, and at the end – when the time comes to do the unthinkable – quietly tragic.”
NEW YORK TIMES, Clive Barnes

“She is upright and dry, but the dryness burns. This is a Hedda without juice but she is a hot, tormented lady. She cannot give and she can find little to take. Karen Sunde’s Hedda is always a noble and compelling beauty.”
VILLAGE VOICE, Arthur Sainer

MEASURE FOR MEASURE
“The special strength of the Measure for Measure is the affecting and insightful portrayal of Isabella by Karen Sunde, a young actress whose work has deepened impressively during her years with the CSC. Sunde’s work puts Isabella at the play’s emotional center.”
NEWSDAY, Allan Wallach

ANTIGONE
“Karen Sunde, whose glassy-eyed, beautiful-ugly Antigone vibrates like an electrified fence. …
She is, I am increasingly convinced, one of the fine dramatic actresses in America.”
VILLAGE VOICE – Carll Tucker
owner, SATURDAY REVIEW

ROSMERSHOLM
“Karen Sunde is brilliant as Rebekka West... She is an actress of extraordinary depth and delicacy.”
THE RECORD, Emory Lewis

“One of the beauties of Karen Sunde’s superb portrayal of Rebecca is her appreciation of the character’s complexities...brilliant and devoted, also ruthless...retains the joy of life which eludes other Ibsen heroines.”
SOHO NEWS, Tish Dace

THE HOMECOMING
“She is lovely in her evocation of a woman faced with the challenges of the God Eros and is both subtly and blatantly in control of the room during most of her moments on stage.”
VILLAGE VOICE, Arthur Sainer

“I was particularly impressed by the composed sensuality of Karen Sunde’s Ruth.”
NEW YORK TIMES, Clive Barnes