2012
2014
Production and Director
The Best Production award for 2013 goes to The Taming of the Shrew at Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland. A cinematic tour de force of colorful costumes, cheesy Coney Island-style beachfront venues, and the refreshingly raw rip of live rockabilly music, this was not just laugh-out-loud comedy but expertly directed and imaginatively performed Shakespeare.
The Best Director award for 2013 goes to David Ivers, also for Oregon Shakespeare Festival's The Taming of the Shrew. A notorious problem comedy was in Ivers' deft hands an entertaining evocation of time and place, a brilliant character study into two mature loners, and a touchingly real and gentle romance.
Honorable mention to Richard Garner for his inventive but fluid direction of Hamlet at Georgia Shakespeare in Atlanta.
Performance
The Best Actress award for 2013 goes to Nell Geisslinger for her portrayal of a beautiful harridan Kate in The Taming of the Shrew at Oregon Shakespeare Festival. A raven-haired hellion with flashing eyes and blistering tongue, Geisslinger's Kate revealed underlying vulnerability and need, memorably combining everything into one of the sexiest stage kisses anywhere ever.
Honorable mention to Tracy Michelle Arnold for her elegant aging Egyptian queen, both vain and vulnerable, in Antony and Cleopatra at American Players Theatre in Spring Green, Wisconsin.
The Best Actor award for 2013 goes to Matt Schwader as a tough but emotional title Prince in Hamlet at American Players Theatre. Leading-man good looks and an agile physicality, but Schwader's brilliant performance did far more than passeth show, rich with poignant inner turmoil from the battering of betrayal upon betrayal, eager and desperate to be understood throughout, finally resolute and tragically doomed at the end.
The Best Supporting Actor award for 2013 goes to Rick Blunt for his irrepressible faux-philosophic party-monster Falstaff in Henry IV Part One at American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, Virginia. Blusteringly friendly and outgoing - Blunt greeted incoming audience members as they entered the Blackfriars, selling raffle tickets and pushing refreshment sales - with good humor and the twinkle of keen intelligence in his eye, the type of character that memorably fills a stage and steals scenes...and would be painfully difficult to turn your back on and betray.
The Best Supporting Actress award for 2013 goes to Diane D'Aquila for her iron-fisted Volumnia in Coriolanus by Shakespeare Theatre Company at the Lansburgh in Washington D.C. Too stern and over-proud, D'Aquila's sharp-witted mother obviously instilled in her son, the titular military leader, a tragic overdose of civic duty and a twisted sense of honor, too unrelenting in her own belief system to be anything but pragmatic, even at the betrayal of flesh and blood.
Technicals
The Best Scenic Design award for 2013 goes to Jo Winiarski for the multi-level playing areas of The Taming of the Shrew at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, with rooftop garage bands, a projection screen, background images of a rollercoaster and a Ferris Wheel, all eye candy behind the Coney Island-like stands and shops and attractions onstage.
Honorable mention to Alexander Dodge's marble staircase and columns representing a corrupt Washington D.C. in Julius Caesar at Chicago Shakespeare Theater.
The Best Costume Design award for 2013 goes to Meg Neville for all the rainbow splashes of color and beach fun at Oregon Shakespeare Festival's The Taming of the Shrew. Greasers, nerds, and motorcycle daredevils abound in a show that was as much fun to see as it was to hear.
Honorable mention to Charlotte Dean for the detailed styling of late 1930s Italy in The Merchant of Venice at Stratford Festival in Ontario.
The Best Lighting Design award for 2013 goes to Marcus Doshi for the neon-drenched debauchery of 1970s Manhattan represented in a disco-modernized Measure for Measure at The Goodman Theatre in Chicago. Neon signs - "Sex," "Live," "Peep Show," "Men Only" - flash upstage in pulsing contrast to the brightly lit courtroom of Angelo or the shadowy murk of the dungeons below.
The Best Original Music and Sound Design award for 2013 goes to Paul James Prendergast for the four-piece rock-band scoring of The Taming of the Shrew at Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Everything from beach surfer-rock to rockabilly to straight out rock-and-roll lifts an already rousing production that concludes, of course, with a guitar-driven duet.
Honorable mention to the Q Brothers for the hip-hop songs that helped recount a tragic tale of jealousy and murder in Othello: The Remix at Chicago Shakespeare Theater.