2000
2002 
Production and Director
The Best Production award for 2001 goes to Henry V at the Stratford Festival of Canada, a brilliant modernization to circa World War One but depicted through the lens of a contemporary television documentary Chorus and crew shooting graphic video images in black and white that are projected on a huge upstage scrim.
The Best Director award for 2001 goes to Jeannette Lambermont for the Stratford Festival of Canada's Henry V. Lambermont brilliantly depicts both the dark Machiavellian side and the handsome leadership of her title King, deftly blending evocative lighting and shadows, an on-stage cellist, ample video projections, and a pseudo-modernization to the Great War.
Performance
The Best Actress award for 2001 goes to Kate Fry as Viola in Twelfth Night at Court Theatre, a strong and sympathetic central presence within the dichotomies of gross self-indulgence and intolerant rigidity within the oddball 1960s London mod-like Illyria.
The Best Actor award for 2001 goes to Graham Abbey for his King Henry in Henry V at the Stratford Festival of Canada. Abbey's multifaceted King is no longer the prig prince, and he is presented in fascinating alternations from heroic military leader, astute political genius, and handsome ladies' man to selfish political hypocrite, disingenuous monarch, and battlefield butcher, all wrapped in Abbey's boyishly charming physical presence.
The Best Supporting Actor award for 2001 goes to Mike Nussbaum for his dual roles as the ailing wheelchair-bound Gaunt and the amiably robust Gardener in Richard II at Chicago Shakespeare Theater. Nussbaum's hoarse Gaunt brims with impassioned plain speaking and is contrasted with his amiable Gardener whose comments unknowingly present graphic metaphors and heaps of harsh poltical criticism.
The Best Supporting Actress award for 2001 goes to Cheryl Leigh Williams as the fiery Volumnia in Coriolanus at the Illinois Shakespeare Festival. Her temperament seeming to alternate with her costumes, from glowering scarlet to morose black, Williams' manic-depressive mother proves as twisted and frighteningly violent as her military-leader son.
Technicals
The Best Scenic Design award for 2001 goes to Dany Lyne for the stylized modern television documentary of World War One that characterizes Henry V at the Stratford Festival of Canada. A long upstage ramp ingeniously becomes a ships' hold, a long battlefield march, and the tunnels at a siege, and an enormous projection screen is brilliantly used for slideshows, film clips, artistic images, photographs, and live video feed from a hand-held camera.
The Best Costume Design award for 2001 also goes to Dany Lyne, for the widely varied designs for the Stratford Festival of Canada's Henry V. Insightful contrasts of social standing within richly detailed designs of sky-blue puffery on the French in layers of ruffled velvet, to the patchwork rags of the dirt-poor Boar's Head denizens, to the World War One wool of the trudging English soldiers, all set against the contemporary black of a TV documentary crew.
The Best Lighting Design award for 2001 goes to Kevin Adams for the array of emotional tones within Chicago Shakespeare Theater's Richard II. Adams employs two towering banks of lights upstage for concert-like shock effects, and his work enhances a multitude of scenes: the shadowless brightness of the court contrasts with the pulsating red glow within Richard's private discotheque; the treason trials play out beneath horizontal yellow neon tubing upstage; the supposed calm in the 5.3 aftermath is lit in mellow blue neon; and the 5.5 regicide occurs in the eeriness of just nine bare red bulbs lighting the dank dungeon.
The Best Sound and Music Design award for 2001 goes to Wade Staples for the deft handling of sound effects and somber on-stage cello original score for Henry V at the Stratford Festival of Canada.