2005
2007 
Production and Director
The Best Production award for 2006 goes to King Lear at the Goodman Theatre, an ultra-violent and shockingly sexual pushing of boundaries that plumbs the depths of the difficult tragedy. Brutal and nihilistic, a scathing commentary on modern politics that is monumental in its scope.
The Best Director award for 2006 goes to Robert Falls for the Goodman's King Lear, an audaciously bold social criticism that ambitiously reaches beyond familial character study to become a fierce theatrical epic.
Performance
The Best Actress award for 2006 goes to Lucy Peacock for her matronly Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing at the Stratford Festival of Canada. Peacock's Beatrice becomes fiery and sharp-tongued when confronted again with Benedick, but she gradually - with a few bumps along the way - softens and matures with the depths of her emotions.
The Best Actor award for 2006 goes to Stacy Keach's Eastern European dictator in the title role of King Lear at the Goodman Theatre. A bloated tyrant in a sky-blue suit accepting false praise at his retirement gala at the beginning, Keach's titanic Lear spirals into rage in the urban wreckage of his own making, descending into a garbage-picking vagrant then a bare-naked half-crazed outcast before finally re-emerging as a forgiving human being.
The Best Supporting Actor award for 2006 goes to Mike Nussbaum for his sympathetic Polonius in Hamlet at Chicago Shakespeare Theater. Doddering and genuinely concerned for his family, Nussbaum's richly nuanced Polonius is far less a blathering pedant than he is a sad and ailing old man.
The Best Supporting Actress award for 2006 goes to Kate Arrington for her drugged out celebrity-heiress Regan in the Goodman Theatre's King Lear. Sporting lingerie, she arrives onstage in a smoke-filled luxury car to confront and abuse her powerless father and meets her end by graphically depicted suffocation at the hands of her sister.
Technicals
The Best Scenic Design award for 2006 goes to Walt Spangler for his breathtaking stagecraft in King Lear at the Goodman Theatre. An expansive ballroom with Lear's massive portrait for the opening scenes belies the bombed-out rubble of the urban countryside without, flanked by the chilling 9/11 evocation of girders from collapsed building towers.
The Best Costume Design award for 2006 goes to Mark Bailey for his monochromatic color scheme for Hamlet at Chicago Shakespeare Theater. Ingeniously contrasting the inky cloak of Hamlet against a wedding party in glaring white in the opening scenes, Bailey reverses the difference in the second act, with the white-clad tragic hero returning from England to confront the court again, though this time they all wear mourning black at Ophelia's funeral.
The Best Lighting Design award for 2006 goes to Michael Philippi for his effects in the Goodman's King Lear. The strobe-lit lightning storm punctuates a raging on the heath that is a defining moment in a powerhouse production.
The Best Sound and Music Design award for 2006 goes to Joe Court for his Jamaican-style scoring and array of sound effects in the Illinois Shakespeare Festival's Caribbean vision of The Comedy of Errors.