Laurie Carlos

From her obituary. Obie Award-winning performer, director and poet Laurie Smith Carlos, who made an indelible mark on New York’s avant-garde theater scene before relocating to the Twin Cities in midlife and mentoring a generation of artists here, died of colon cancer on December 29, 2016. She was 67.

The Twin Cities artistic community was reeling Friday. “She’s a remarkable artist and it’s a big loss,” said Philip Bither, the senior performing arts curator at the Walker Art Center. A multidisciplinary artist, Carlos won accolades for her dynamic range of work, from a 1977 Obie for her role in the original production of Ntozake Shange’s “For colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf” to two New York Dance and Performance (Bessie) Awards as a choreographer of her original plays, to a 2004 Bush Foundation artistic fellowship.