gravestone for local Broadway star, Karla Burns

We have started this fundraiser to honor a woman who broke barriers and made history for black women in musical theater. Karla Burns, a Broadway star and loving friend, was placed in her final resting place on June 4, 2021, without a gravestone. We are looking to raise the needed funds for a bench, which will encompass Karla, Her sister Donna, and her mother Catherine. As per the wishes of Karla’s living sister Donna.

Karla Burns was an inspirational figure who touched many people's lives through her career on Broadway. Later in life, she gave singing lessons to rising talents. Karla grew up in Wichita, Kansas, and graduated from WSU. She started her broadway career in a production of Show Boat.

"Karla Burns, a singer, and actor who in 1991 won a Laurence Olivier Award, Britain's highest stage honor, for her role as the riverboat cook Queenie in a production of "Show Boat," and who later fought to regain her soulful voice after losing it in an operation to remove a growth in her throat . . . A spokeswoman for the Olivier Awards' sponsoring organization, the Society of London Theater, said it's believed that Ms. Burns was the first Black performer to win that honor . . . Her Olivier, Britain's equivalent of a Tony, for best supporting performance in a musical, came in 1991."

Karla led an extraordinary life and performed all over the world. In addition to her Olivier for her performance as Queenie, Karla was nominated for a Tony, and performed a one-woman play about the life of Hattie McDaniel. Another fantastic performer from Wichita, Kansas, best known for her role in "Gone With the Wind."

""I've noticed very much the similarities,"" she said in an interview on the public radio station KMUW Wichita in 2018. ""I've noticed that people do often look at your color, your size, and it makes a difference as to what roles you get. McDaniel had the same struggles at a time when people looked at every bit of you and you were blessed to get a part."

She added: "She'd take the words, and because she knew how to sass them up, she didn't serve anybody. She played a subservient role, but she was never a subservient human being."

These are just a few examples of Karla and her remarkable life. She impacted everyone around her, which is why we have chosen a bench as her gravestone. Karla deserves a marker to serve as a place of rest and remembrance for those that she cared for and who cared for her.

I met Karla a year after her surgery in 2008. I was at church and saw some of her students singing on stage. I looked at my mom and said, "that! I wanna do that." I was eight years old. Karla used to joke that I was her greatest accomplishment, not because I was a good singer but because she got me to understand a piano's pitch. Suffice it to say, I was not a natural, But she worked with me, and through the years, our voices grew together. Leading to us performing in a Christmas Carol for seven years straight. I considered Karla Burns's family, as I'm sure, so many other of her students did. Even long after I stopped having voice lessons, Karla would still come by for family holidays and Christmas pasts. She even sang to my great grandmother, Dorthy, her favorite hymns before Dorthy died. She's given my family and me so many special memories. A place to sit, remember, and spend time with Karla, and a marker of recognition of her life, is the least we can all do. I hope you consider contributing to this fundraiser, as it would give us all a place to remember Karla. All Money leftover will go to Karla’s living sister Donna to help cover lingering costs.

We thank you from the bottom of our hearts,

Rose Palmer and Donna Burns

To read more about Karla, check out her obituary in the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/14/theater/karla-burns-dead.html