2011
2013
Production and Director
The Best Production award for 2012 goes to a superb World War One-era Richard III at American Players Theatre in Spring Green, Wisconsin. More a study of the rise and fall of mad dictator than a portrait of evil, this riveting outdoor show is intelligently directed, handsomely costumed, and expertly performed entertainment.
The Best Director award for 2012 goes to Jim Warren for American Shakespeare Center's scathing King John. An ingenious blend of dramatic political machination with social irony, Warren laces the show with effectively played contemporary songs. Honorable mention to James DeVita for his insightful direction of American Players Theatre's complex Richard III.
Performance
The Best Actress award for 2012 goes to Gracyn Mix for her 1930s Hollywood heroine-style Rosalind in As You Like It at the Illinois Shakespeare Festival. Plucky and vulnerable throughout, Mix provides this outdoor comedy with a pretty - and endearingly love-struck - romantic interest. Honorable mention to the Lucille Ball-pratfall prone Beatrice played wonderfully by Deborah Hay in Much Ado About Nothing at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Ontario.
The Best Actor award for 2012 goes to Benjamin Curns for his Bastard Philip Faulconbridge in King John at American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, Virginia. Confident, bold and steadfastly loyal and moral, Curns' leather-clad Bastard ironically proves himself of noble heart and soul in a bitter tale of decidedly unroyal Kings and Queens.
The Best Supporting Actor award for 2012 goes to Jim DeVita for his bitterly witty Pandarus in American Players Theatre's Troilus and Cressida. Limping and apparently syphilitic, he brings the titular lovers together in the morally questionable war, then laments their parting with a brutal condemnation of the world.
The Best Supporting Actress award for 2012 goes to Tracy Michelle Arnold for her memorably witchy Margaret in Richard III at American Players Theatre. Arnold's cursing comes in a tremulous incantation, and her withering comments crush a King and inspire a deposed Queen. Honorable mention to Elizabeth Ledo's ebullient and cigar-chomping Puck-as-Sigmund Freud in Chicago Shakespeare Theater's A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Technicals
In a very close race, the Best Scenic Design award for 2012 goes to Walt Spangler for the multi-level playing areas of The Two Gentlemen of Verona at Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C. Spangler's modern urban wasteland provides a milieu for cogent social criticism, with rusted catwalks over a fast food parking lot with the glow of ugly advertising-world neon and ingenious faux-product placement. Honorable mention to Santo Loquasto's brilliantly Brazilian staircase and foyer for Stratford Shakespeare Festival's Much Ado About Nothing.
The Best Costume Design award for 2012 goes to Rachel Anne Healy for her stylish Richard III at American Players Theatre. An impressive array of military costumes circa World War One for both officers and foot soldiers, plus formal wear for male citizens and lavish gowns for women in an evocative design.
The Best Lighting Design award for 2012 goes to Sarah Hughey for Hamlet at Writers' Theatre in Glencoe, Illinois. Hughey lights a claustrophobic stage like a dungeon or crypt, a looming brick castle wall in orange-yellow upstage, the audience huddled around the perimeter as Hamlet's soliloquies erupt from the darkness as brightly-lit revelations, all but the Prince brilliantly freeze-framed in the moment.
The Best Sound and Music Design award for 2012 goes to Lindsay Jones for the thumping Chicago blues score to Chicago Shakespeare Theater's Timon of Athens. The rumbling growl of the guitar-heavy blues tune "The Running of the Bulls" accompanies Timon's modern Wall Street traders with their martinis and cigars.