[3] There, she gained valuable experience, in roles such as Shakespeare's Juliet,[9][10] Margaret in Thomas Dekker's The Shoemaker's Holiday (starring opposite a young William Schallert),[11] and Cybel in Eugene O'Neill's The Great God Brown.
[12] During this period, Coates also appeared in summer stock with the Bolton Landing Players, earning kudos as Millie in Frederick Jackson's The Bishop Misbehaves,[13] and as Aunt Connie in Mark Reed's Yes, My Darling Daughter.
"[20][21] In 1985, Coates undertook what would later be termed, variously, a nine-year sabbatical or retirement, to volunteer in hospitals and on the phones for AIDS Project Los Angeles and the Gay Men's Health Crisis.
[3] Hartford Courant critic Malcolm Johnson writes:This portrait of the mental disintegration of 85-year-old Gladys Green, acted by the tiny Carolyn Coates with shifts from lucidity and humor to crazy jumbles of words, will break the heart of anyone who has ever suffered through the decline of an aged parent or relative.
[22]Having first met her future husband in 1951, playing Eliza Doolittle to his Henry Higgins in a summer stock production of Pygmalion in Worcester, Massachusetts,[3][6] Coates married actor James Noble in 1955.