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). 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"; She was a co-artistic director, with Marlies Yearby, of Movin' Spirits Dance Theater Company. Mid-career, Carlos relocated to the Twin Cities of
Minneapolis–Saint Paul during the 1990s, performing at the
Walker Art Center and the Guthrie Theater. In 1998, she took a curatorial producing position at Penumbra Theatre Company. 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 also served on the board of the
Jerome Foundation. 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. She was also awarded a
Bush Fellowship. ==Personal life and death==