Laurie Dorothea Carlos (née Smith; January 25, 1949 – December 29, 2016) was an American actress and avant-garde performance artist, playwright and theater director.

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),[6] 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";[4] 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.

Carlos collaborated with artists[8] including contemporary dance company Urban Bush Women, Robbie McCauley, Don Meissner (composer) Jessica Hagedorn, David Murray (saxophonist), Sharon Bridgforth, Deborah Artman, Daniel Alexander Jones, Carl Hancock Rux, Erik Ehn, and Butch Morris.

Carlos's final performances was as the narrator in QUEEN (written by Erik Ehn and Junauda Petrus and directed by Alison Heimstead) at In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre in Minneapolis, September 2016.St.Paul.