Best Theater Production (Since March 2001)

Coyote on a Fence opened soon after the September 11 terrorist attacks, and it says much for the production that it retained its strength and seemed both true and important in the face of those terrible events. Bruce Graham's play examines the death penalty in America and concerns two men on death row. One is a psychologist convicted of murdering a drug dealer, the other a skinhead who blocked the door of a black church with his truck and set fire to the building, killing 37 people. The play asks serious questions about the value of lives such as this and, by extrapolation, all human life. Chip Walton directed his first-rate cast at the Acoma Center with a sure hand, and Gene Gillette turned in a riveting performance as the childish and terribly damaged skinhead.