Laurie Carlos

Laurie Carlos
Actress Laurie Carlos
Born	Laurie Dorothea Smith (1949-01-25)January 25, 1949 New York, New York, U.S.
Died	December 29, 2016(2016-12-29) (aged 67) St. Paul, Minnesota, U.S.
Cause of death	Colon cancer
Occupation	Actress, playwright, director
Years active	1968–2016
Children	Ambersunshower

Laurie Dorothea Carlos (née Smith; January 25, 1949 – December 29, 2016) was an award-winning American actress and avant-garde performance artist, playwright and theater director. She was also known for her work mentoring emerging artists in the theater.

Born on New York City's Lower East Side, Carlos' father, Walter Smith, was a drummer for blues and R&B acts including B.B. King, Bo Diddley and Jackie Wilson. Her mother was an exotic dancer. At the age of 14 Carlos saw Gloria Foster perform in the documentary play In White America by Martin Duberman. As a result, Carlos said "for the very first time I realized how much power the stage had politically, and I wanted that." Carlos graduated from the High School of Performing Arts and, at the age of 19, worked as a casting director for Harry Belafonte and others.

Carlos initially performed and worked in New York City, and joined the cast of Ntozake Shange's “for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf” during its conceptual period in 1975 as the work performed at bars on the Lower East Side. She followed it on its journey from the New Federal Theater to the Public Theater to the Booth Theater on Broadway, and onward to a television adaptation seen on the PBS series “American Playhouse” in 1982, originating the role of Lady in Blue and appeared in the televised version of the play on PBS. She also appeared in the original company of Ntozake Shange's play Spell No. 7 and Edgar White's Les Femme Noir (also at the Joseph Papp Public Theater).

Ms. Carlos also frequently collaborated with dance companies, including the Urban Bush Women, and with them performed and co-created the works "Heat" and " Praise House" both on stage and on the televised version directed by Julie Dash. Carlos was also a theater director and playwright whose plays include White Chocolate (for My Father),The Cooking Show, Organdy Falsetto, Vanquished by Voodoo and Nonsectarian Conversations With the Dead. Her plays and performance pieces have been called "poetic, abstract, associative"; a "blending of history, poetry, mysticism and personal testimony" of "impressionistic language" and "haunting ancestral voices that balance images of brutality and agonizing struggle with those of endurance and continuity." She was a co-artistic director, with Marlies Yearby, of Movin' Spirits Dance Theater Company.