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Best All-Around Woman of the Theater

Wendy Ishii

Wendy Ishii is the artistic director and co-founder of Bas Bleu, a major theatrical force in Fort Collins. She has also gained attention for her work on the plays of Samuel Beckett with faculty from Colorado State University. Ishi's energy and vision keep Bas Bleu going: Her efforts to secure funding facilitated the company's recent move to a larger home. And in performance after performance, she has also proved herself an extraordinary actress. As an all-powerful but eccentric angel in this year's Angels in America, she ripped off the roof. Which, come to think of it, seems only fitting.

Best All-Around Man of the Theater

Ed Baierlein

Where would Denver theater be without Ed Baierlein? He and his talented wife, Sallie Diamond, started Germinal Stage thirty years ago, back when there was very little theater of any kind in town. He has produced a roster of challenging, hilarious and thoughtful plays every year since -- and in the process, has discovered many of the city's best actors. Baierlein acts (brilliantly), directs, runs the box office and handles publicity, all with finesse. He's also one of the most literate theater people around, staging work that challenges the imagination while never pandering to the crowd.

Best Season for an Actress

Mare Trevathan

Mare Trevathan brings a combination of subtlety, conviction and luminosity to every role she undertakes. In Harold Pinter's Old Times for Bas Bleu, she was the mysterious Kate, whose husband and onetime best friend spent the evening vying for her attention. She was also somewhat muted as the wife of an adulterous husband in Curious Theatre Company's The Long Christmas Ride Home. More marital problems followed in Curious's The Goat or, Who Is Sylvia?, when Trevathan's character, Stevie, learned that her husband had fallen in love with a goat. Trevathan juggled these complexities with the combination of passion and cool intelligence she brings to all her roles.

Best Season for an Actor

Jamie Horton

Jamie Horton, one of the earliest members of the Denver Center Theatre Company, is a local treasure. He proved it again this year with his performance as Dalton Trumbo in Curious's Trumbo: Red, White and Blacklisted, making the man eccentric, outspoken, wise and wily in that peculiarly evocative American way. Horton also shone in The Misanthrope at the Denver Center. And he was almost the only actor on stage with sufficient power and presence to project a distinct personality through the speech-muffling masks of the DCTC's Oedipus Rex.

Best Season for a Director

Nagle Jackson

Nagle Jackson is known as a classical kind of guy -- an intelligent translator and a witty and incisive playwright. So it wasn't a surprise when he staged a lucid production of Molire's The Misanthrope for the Denver Center Theater Company. But who expected him to follow with a wildly controversial contemporary drama about a guy shtupping a goat? Jackson pulled off The Goat or, Who Is Sylvia? for Curious Theatre Company with both energy and style.

Best Theater Season

Curious Theatre Company

Courtesy Buntport Theater Facebook page
Okay, so we weren't knocked out by The Tricky Part, and we found some fault with The Long Christmas Ride Home and Yellowman. But Inventing Van Gogh and The Goat Or, Who Is Sylvia? represented theater at its best. And even though some productions are more winning than others, there's a stamp of integrity on every single Curious production. Artistic director Chip Walton doesn't decide on repertoire by convening focus groups or holding his finger to the wind; he's interested in artistic and intellectual exploration. Curious brings in exciting plays that would never be seen here otherwise, and brings them to life with strong performances and production values. How lucky for the rest of us.

Best Chance for Change in the Theater Scene

Kent Thompson

The winds of change are blowing through the Denver Center Theatre Company. New artistic director Kent Thompson has announced that the upcoming season will include two more plays than usual and feature female, black and Latino voices. Thompson seems intent on restoring the company's role in nurturing original plays, and to that end is networking with important local directors. Finally, by working to attract new audiences to Denver Center productions, he plans to make the city a center for theater nationwide. We wish him every success.

Best Tribute to the West Side

Westside Oratorio

El Centro Su Teatro's Tony Garcia combined with composer Daniel Valdez to turn the saga of the Chicano community into a moving presentation about Denver's Mexican-American population. But Westside Oratorio wasn't just about Denver; it chronicled decades of experience throughout the entire Southwest. As Garcia noted in his script, memory in the United States is short. That notion was ironically borne out by the location of this production: Westside Oratorio was staged on the Auraria campus, which is built on the site of what once was the heart of Denver's Latino community.

Best Drag Troupe

The Alterboys

Drag queens? Please. When it comes to gender-bent entertainment, boys who dress as girls are as worn out as an old pair of pantyhose. Fortunately, Denver is home to the Alterboys, a troupe of six women who love grrrls and look like bois. The Alterboys have a flavor for every taste: cowboy, gangsta rapper, '50s greaser, punk-rocker, even an Eminem lookalike who transforms into Madonna. Their shows are as progressive and avant-garde as female drag acts on either coast. For a truly transforming experience, go where the boys are.

Best Instigators of an Impromptu Conga Line

Log
LoDo Music Festival

Joan Jett, Sonia Dada and Karl Denson's Tiny Universe were the major draws of last year's LoDo Music Festival. But tucked away from the main stage, quarantined in the dirt like some flea-infested sideshow, the funky members of Log held court for late-night stragglers not quite ready to call it a night. And in the midst of all the hip-swaying grooves and flying sparks from the band's industrial grinder, something wonderfully spontaneous happened: A conga line broke out. Fueled by roller-skating beauties and rowdy drunks in animal costumes, the line eventually ensnared even security personnel and people who'd been heading for the exits. Brief but oh-so passionate, it was the kind of joyous outburst that would have made Federico Fellini proud.

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