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Best Soundman

John Fate

Denver's got plenty of venues, but when it comes to sound quality, not all rooms are created equal. For a sure bet, though, walk into 3 Kings Tavern almost any night of the week and see a show with John Fate behind the board. From sparse folk to the heaviest of metal, the soundman extraordinaire makes the music of every act that steps on stage here sound incredible. Even during summer festivals, when Fate's juggling band after band, he devotes his attention to every instrument and mic, from sound check to finished product. A nice dude, to boot, Fate's a pleasure to work with, making sure that the bands are happy with the mix, the monitors are on point and the audience is having a good time. Whether you're on stage or in the crowd, Fate brings the best sonic experience to all parties.

Best Steampunk Opera

Luminous Thread

Serendipity landed Luminous Thread in Denver. Lucky us: The steampunk performance ensemble brings something to the cultural mix that didn't exist before, augmented by trained operatic voices, a bit of Wellesian sci-fi surrealism and, well, luminous threads — beautiful costumes and sets that echo steampunk's Victorian roots. Led by Ben Sargent, who holds up the business end, and multi-talented artistic director Mary Lin, whose resumé includes everything from writing librettos to fire dancing, Luminous Thread is now gearing up for its original opera, Queen Victoria's Floating Garden of Secrets and Natural Wonders, which opens later this spring with performances in Boulder and Denver. The troupe is promising a rousing sea-bound operetta with adventuring mermaids and sky pirates, malfunctioning steampunk gizmos and even an ecological warning/moral at the end. Rest assured, this is not opera as you've ever seen it before — and that's a good thing.

Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy

Geoffrey Kent
Noises Off

Geoffrey Kent is the go-to fight specialist for almost every theater in the region, which means he's a very physical actor. He also tends to be a cheerful, high-spirited presence on stage. We knew all this before he played Garry in Noises Off, a 2012 Colorado Shakespeare Festival production. Even so, we couldn't possibly have anticipated the level of his brilliant, manic energy in the role. He was fun to watch throughout, but the play's climax was the killer. It required him to hop up a set of high stairs with his shoelaces tied together, fall precipitously down the same stairs, tumble over most of the furniture and come to a thumping stop on his back on the floor. Here's hoping the thunderous applause made up for the bruises.

Best Supporting Actor in a Drama

Ben Bonenfant
Red

In Curious Theatre's Red, Ken was the kid who apprenticed with the overbearing, narcissistic artist Mark Rothko, making coffee, cleaning up, fetching Chinese food and enduring huge, pointless and unexpected rages. Ben Bonenfant's portrayal of Ken was vulnerable and self-effacing. But even as Ken soaked up the things the master had to teach, he also began to understand the weakness and self-contradiction at the heart of Rothko's posturing. You could see all this, as well as Ken's growing strength as a man and an artist, in Bonenfant's finely drawn performance.

Best Supporting Actor in a Musical

Nate Kissingford
Miracle on 34th Street

Nate Kissingford is only six years old. Still, we can't remember seeing an actor stop the action quite the way he did when little Tommy took the courtroom stand in the Arvada Center's Miracle on 34th Street and, with devastating innocence, utterly destroyed his prosecutor father's case against Kris Kringle. Cute kids often bring down the house, as Kissingford did. But it's a rare child who can perform with this much poise, timing, concentration and sweet lack of self-consciousness.

Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy

Deborah Persoff
The Play About the Baby

Magnificently stagey and at the same time deeply sincere, Deborah Persoff is a mainstay of the local theater scene and always a pleasure to watch, whether she's being wryly sophisticated, dead serious or What-Ever-Happened-to-Baby-Jane crazy. She got to strut all her comic stuff as Woman, half of an older couple determined to disabuse a younger couple of their illusions in Edward Albee's The Play About the Baby at Germinal Stage Denver this season. At one point she delivered a fabulous monologue about living the artist's life in Europe that described the painter who hanged himself for love of her and used every cliché author that Albee could get his hands on. Like almost everything Persoff does, it was pitch-perfect.

Best Supporting Actress in a Drama

Aimee Janelle Nelson
In the Next Room, or the Vibrator Play

It requires a lot of daring to take on the role of Mrs. Daldry in In the Next Room, or the Vibrator Play, about a Victorian doctor who, in accordance with the practices of the day, cures hysteria by providing orgasms. As Mrs. Daldry in Equinox Theatre's production, Aimee Janelle Nelson had to portray complete sexual innocence and also deliver periodic on-stage orgasms — the kind of orgasms a woman might have if she'd never known such things were possible or been exposed to the sexual imagery we see everywhere today. Nelson has the kind of little-girl sweetness and vulnerability we associate with Marilyn Monroe. Her laughter is silvery and infectious; her hesitations speak volumes. To top it off, she plays the violin. Beautifully.

Best Supporting Actress in a Musical

Joannie Brosseau
42nd Street

Joannie Brosseau can sing. She can dance. She can play a wide range of roles, most of them with an irrepressible comic edge. Most of all, she has an indefinable quality that makes audiences snap into high alert whenever she steps on a stage. You could call her perky, but perky sounds mindless. Can you be smartly perky? That's certainly what Brosseau was in Boulder's Dinner Theatre's 42nd Street, bringing all her shine and energy to the part of Maggie Jones, kicking the action into high gear and encouraging her chorines to "Go Into Your Dance."

Best Theater Production

The Book of Mormon

A couple of hometown boys — Trey Parker and Matt Stone — made good, very good, with The Book of Mormon, which debuted on Broadway two years ago and started its tour in Denver last summer, with tickets selling out within hours of going on sale. The story of a couple of Mormon missionaries sent to Uganda, the show was just as mocking and funny as you'd expect from the creators of South Park, and also just as clever. It took on Mormonism and the horrors of poverty and violence, and somehow — without racism or callousness — made it all hysterically funny. The songs were tuneful, and the big, show-stopping numbers did indeed stop the show. Everything from the acting to the costumes to the tech was bright and tight, and it all worked together to create a blast of music, dirty jokes, color and hilarity. Miss it the first time around? The Book of Mormon is coming back this fall.

Best Theater Supporter

Gloria Shanstrom

As general manager of the Colorado Theatre Guild, Gloria Shanstrom maintains the group's website, stays in touch with companies around the state and administers the annual Henry Awards, among many other tasks. Wearing a second hat, she does publicity for several Colorado companies, providing perhaps the most competent and reliable service around. But her work is about much more than paperwork and administration. Shanstrom networks tirelessly; gives smart, disinterested advice; reaches out to new companies and if necessary helps them polish their image; attends dozens of shows; celebrates happy events with theater people, and grieves with those who've sustained losses. She soothes myriad frayed nerves and calms inflamed egos. Theater in this town would be far poorer without her.

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