2002
2004 
Production and Director
The Best Production award for 2003 goes to Chicago Shakespeare Theater's modernized Julius Caesar. Superbly acted and audaciously realized with a drunken Anthony, ethereal projections, haunting images of assassinated world leaders, and tuxedos and business suits that become shockingly splattered with blood. Honorable mention to a slew of outstanding competition, including a wicked butcher-shop Rose Rage at the same theater's black-box space, a two-play storytellers' The Romance Cycle at Court Theatre, a disturbingly comic Titus Andronicus that is macabre bloody fun from Defiant Theatre, and a remarkable speakeasy-versus-stockyards re-imagining of As You Like It at Illinois Shakespeare Festival.
The Best Director award for 2003 goes to Edward Hall for the five-hour-plus epic Rose Rage, a modern re-examination of the Henry VI trilogy in the claustrophobic darkness of Chicago Shakespeare Theater's tiny upstairs space. Along with a stunning visualization inside an abattoir that is a gruesome cross between butcher shop and torture chamber, Hall expertly directs a young ensemble that portrays a plethora of roles as well as the brooding and malevolent citizenry.
Performance
The Best Actress award for 2003 goes to Ailene King for her plucky heroine Rosalind in the Illinois Shakespeare Festival's As You Like It. Smart and sophisticated, then deeply frightened yet determined, King's Celia progresses across an endearing character arc, all the while delightfully head-over-heels in love.
The Best Actor award for 2003 goes to Kevin Gudahl for his deeply conflicted Brutus in Julius Caesar at Chicago Shakespeare Theater. Gudahl's intellectual Brutus, in wire-rim spectacles and sweater, finds his darker side prodded and goaded as he ultimately leads a bloody coup d'état, in a superbly nuanced portrayal that keenly evokes tragic echoes from both Othello and Macbeth.
The Best Supporting Actor award for 2003 goes to Scott Parkinson for his Iago-like plotter Cassius in Chicago Shakespeare Theater's Julius Caesar, a seething performance that narrowly bests his own deliciously campy performance in drag as Queen Margaret just upstairs in Rose Rage.
The Best Supporting Actress award for 2003 goes to Kate Fry for her dual role in the multifaceted but fully integrated The Romance Cycle at Court Theatre, playing both the distraught but determined heroine Imogen from a dark and dour Cymbeline, then the murderously jealous Dionyza from a frantic Pericles, plus a variety of ensemble roles that feature an abundance of musicianship and lovely vocalizing.
Technicals
The Best Scenic Design award for 2003 goes to Michael Pavelka for Rose Rage at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, a two-level modern slaughterhouse with steel lockers and mesh cages surrounding a central chopping block. The brilliant house of horrors features butchery of actual animal entrails, the sights and smells a brutally graphic stage realization of the cruel violence of the English civil wars.
The Best Costume Design award for 2003 goes to Mariann Verheyen for her 140 designer-quality business suits and gowns for a mammoth cast of thirty-nine performers in Julius Caesar at Chicago Shakespeare Theater.
The Best Lighting Design award for 2003 goes to Ben Ormerod for the chilling atmosphere rendered in Chicago Shakespeare Theater's stunning Rose Rage. Just a small black-box space for audiences of about one hundred, but stark glares within the frightening butcher shop and angry blood-red pulses during combat sequences, plus ingenious use of flashlights, lamps, torches, and spots, all lending mightily to a an environment of coldness and cruelty.
The Best Sound and Music Design award for 2003 goes to Sean Sinitski and Andre Pluess for their abundance of effects and incidental music in Defiant Theatre's brilliantly frantic Titus Andronicus. Beginning with cracks of thunder and urban street noises like approaching police sirens, the design expertly enhances the anarchic vision of the play, with martial drumming and Stars and Stripes Forever following military-leader Titus, riotous rock music scoring the rebels' plots, the sexy Lavinia belting out a torchy original song in praise of Titus, and rhythmic rap behind the street punks. The über-bloody conclusion brilliantly plays out amid the violent crash of punk-metal guitars.