Laurie Carlos

Laurie Dorothea Carlos, born Laurie Smith on January 25, 1949, on New York City's Lower East Side, was an American actress, avant-garde performance artist, playwright, and theater director. She died on December 29, 2016, in the Sholom Home East Hospice in St. Paul, Minnesota, following a diagnosis of stage 4 colon cancer in September of that year.

Carlos grew up in a household shaped by performance. Her father, Walter Smith, was a drummer who worked with blues and R&B acts including B.B. King, Bo Diddley, and Jackie Wilson, and her mother was an exotic dancer. A pivotal moment came at age 14, when Carlos attended a performance of Martin Duberman's documentary play In White America featuring Gloria Foster. She later credited that experience with revealing to her the political power of the stage. Carlos went on to graduate from the High School of Performing Arts and, at 19, worked as a casting director for Harry Belafonte and others.

Her Broadway credit came in 1976 with Ntozake Shange's for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf, in which she originated the role of Lady in Blue. Carlos had joined the production during its conceptual period in 1975, when it was performed at bars on the Lower East Side, and followed it through engagements at the New Federal Theater and the Public Theater before it reached the Booth Theater on Broadway. She also appeared in the 1982 PBS American Playhouse televised adaptation of the production. The role earned her an Obie Award. Carlos additionally appeared in the original company of Shange's Spell No. 7 and in Edgar White's Les Femme Noir, both at the Joseph Papp Public Theater.

Carlos collaborated frequently with dance companies, most notably Urban Bush Women, with whom she performed and co-created the works Heat and Praise House, both of which were also produced in televised versions. Praise House was directed by Julie Dash. Her work on Heat earned her a Bessie Award. She also served as co-artistic director of Movin' Spirits Dance Theater Company alongside Marlies Yearby.

As a playwright, Carlos authored works including White Chocolate (for My Father), The Cooking Show, Organdy Falsetto, Vanquished by Voodoo, and Nonsectarian Conversations With the Dead. Her collaborators over the course of her career included Robbie McCauley, Jessica Hagedorn, Sharon Bridgforth, Daniel Alexander Jones, Carl Hancock Rux, Erik Ehn, Butch Morris, composer Don Meissner, and saxophonist David Murray, among others.

In the 1990s, Carlos relocated to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis–Saint Paul, where she performed at the Walker Art Center and the Guthrie Theater. In 1998, she joined Penumbra Theatre Company in a curatorial producing role, selecting scripts for the company with a stated goal of bringing more feminine voices into the theater. She also supported emerging artists through Naked Stages, a fellowship for new talent based at Pillsbury House Theatre, and curated Pillsbury House's Late Nite Series, which presented new works by artists from both New York and Minnesota. Among the artists she worked with was Suzan-Lori Parks. Carlos also served on the board of the Jerome Foundation.

Her film and television credits include The Landlord, directed by Hal Ashby, and Fresh Kill, in addition to the American Playhouse and Praise House television productions. Her final performance was as the narrator in QUEEN, written by Erik Ehn and Junauda Petrus and directed by Alison Heimstead, presented at In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre in Minneapolis in September 2016. Beyond the Obie and Bessie Awards, Carlos received recognition from the National Endowment for the Arts, Theatre Communications Group, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and was awarded a Bush Fellowship. She was the mother of alternative soul and R&B singer Ambersunshower.