When young artist Jean Cocteau received an invitation to design for the grand impresario Sergei Diaghilev of the international phenomenon Ballets Russes, he asked him what he should do? Without pause, Diaghilev answered, “Astonish me!”
Well, that’s a bit like our past theater season. We kept getting astonished at every turn. That’s why this year’s nominees, finalists, and winners were so hard to choose. We had dozens of people and plays in each category to consider. Everyone did such outstanding work. We know there had to be winners, but did you folks have to make it so difficult. It took weeks to decide. We blame you fantastic Houston artists for holding us up, for contentious debate. If you all hadn’t been so damned exceptional, we could have come to a consensus weeks ago! You have all thrown so many bouquets at us with your exceptional work and super-charged talent that we were overloaded, smothered under rose petals like the unfortunate guests of debauched emperor Heliogabalus when dining at his palace.
The season started on a high with the magic realism of the touring production from Broadway at the Hobby of Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, starring that wiz of a tiger puppet Richard Parker. What charisma, what stage presence, what animal magnetism! That was followed by the intimate quintet of Circle Mirror Transformation from Mighty Acornin the most intimate of spaces at Spring Street Studios, only to be transported to a small studio at the JCC for Mildred Umbrella’s sparkle and tang of The Last Yiddish Speaker. Then we were blasted awake by the singing sickos from Houston Broadway Theatre’s American Psycho with its Broadway caliber production accompanied by its glossy high-end Playbill. In quick succession, the good shows kept coming: the heart-felt two-hander Dancing Lessons from Lionwomen; the tap dancin’ Purlie Victorious at Ensemble; and a stunning and comic Eureka Day from 4th Wall. Then The DaVinci Code mystified at the Alley, while the family epic of the American dream gone sour, The Lehman Trilogy,stunned at Stages. And that was only September.
We can’t list every shining star…well, a few: Endgame at Catastrophic returned with Beckett precision and its theater-of-the-absurd theatricality intact; The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee was revived at Theatre Under the Stars with refreshing insouciance; and the delightful Mud Row, also about inheritance gone wrong, captivated at Stages. Then came the granddaddy of American gay epics, Angels in America at Rec Room Arts, reconceived in its small venue on Jackson Street but made to seem as big as the Hippodrome. Mighty impressive.
Christmas, of course, brought the usual suspects with a standout being the delightful child-friendly musical A Charlie Brown Christmas at Queensbury. Once Scrooge, snowflakes, and sugar plums vanished, we were amazed that the creativity continued with such delights as Broadway’s Water for Elephants; the Alley’s immigration comedy Real Women Have Curves; the inspiring evocative world-premiere of Crime and Punishment: 2026 from A.D. Players; the thoughtful, smoothly acted The Counter at 4th Wall; the dark and sexy Venus in Fur from Dirt Dogs; the embroidered tale of the first Chinese girl in America, displayed like a sideshow attraction, The Chinese Lady, at Stages …
Main Street’s sublime Leopoldstadt, Tom Stoppard’s haunting last play; the astonishingly proficient world premiere musical Brother Andrew at A.D. Players; the Alley’s brash and solid Fences; the deliciously tasty Fat Ham from 4th Wall; all the way to the self-help of Tiny Beautiful Things at Stages; the downtown raunch of Airline Highway from Dirt Dogs; another world premiere, Stages’ gently detailed that drive thru Monterey; and a season that ended in a rush like amyl nitrate with Stages’ rap-spittin’ and dancin’ Spamilton.
On a sad note, we honor veteran set designer James V. Thomas, who died August 2, 2026. A stalwart artist for The Ensemble Theatre, beginning his career under founding director George Hawkins in 1979, Thomas served as resident scenic designer for two decades and as Technical Director of the Fine Arts Department at Houston Community College’s Central Campus. A beloved mentor and teacher, Thomas said in an interview when he received the National Black Theatre Festival’s Outstanding Achievement in Scenic Design Award in 2019, that he started his career at nine years old, building fantasy houses in a field across the street from his family house in Liberty, Missouri, out of discarded refrigerator boxes, a hardware store’s used paint and thrown-out wallpaper rolls. “I learned how to make something out of nothing.” Those cardboard boxes proved an inspiration for an outstanding career that saw his designs transport such productions as The Nacirema Society (a Houston Theater Award nominee in 2013), Race, Fences, King Hedley II, Djembe and the Forest of Christmas Forgotten, By the Way Meet Vera Stark (Ensemble); Stagolee and the Funeral of A Dangerous Word, Purlie Victorious, Present Laughter (Main Street); Glen Garry Glen Ross (Dirt Dogs), and numerous other productions throughout Houston, as well as for companies across America and Europe. He will be missed. God speed, Mr. Thomas.
Our just-finished 2025-26 theater season was an exceptional. Now, we’d like to throw a few bouquets of our own. Congratulations to all finalists and winners. Keep moving on, and inspiring us anew. Thank you all for a season of beauty, joy, and…astonishment. – D.L. Groover
BEST ACTOR
Winner: David Rainey as Troy in Fences (Alley Theatre)
David Rainey has a way of making every role he takes iconic. Does anyone really want another actor to play Scrooge at Christmas? No, absolutely not. Rainey owns the stage, no matter how many times you see that show. A seasoned actor with impeccable credentials, Rainey is a Houston treasure. So, it was unsurprising that his lead role as the frustrated Troy Maxon in August Wilson’s Pulitzer prize-winning Fences was one of the best productions this year, and his stirring portrayal was unforgettable.
One striking thing about Rainey’s consistently stellar artistry is that he makes every role his own. This performance was no copy-cat job of Denzel Washington’s 2010 Broadway production or his 2016 film adaptation of this great American drama. Rainey is his own convincing vessel for Troy’s complicated mix of entitlement and insecurity, swagger and petulance, resentment and regret. Wilson’s telling revelations about the profound paradoxes of trying to achieve a version of the American dream without making others pay the price for setbacks and unhappiness is, as one reviewer noted, Shakespearian in both range and depth. Few actors can give such challenging roles the local habitation and the name that Rainey delivers under the excellent direction of Eileen Morris and a superlative ensemble cast.
Rainey rages at the world, and we empathize. Yet there are limits to the delusions Maxon harbors, the rationalizations he creates for his transgressions, and the excruciating sacrifices he asks others to make for his own disappointments. Neither villain nor hero, he has callous moments and notable victories.
When Rainey as Troy yells at his son, betrays his wife, does a kindness to a friend, or kids himself about the reasons he could never make it in baseball, we learn profound lessons on how our defense mechanisms can damage those around us, we know we are seeing not only the profound historical and psychological insights that Wilson’s plays provide, but also a master class in acting from the Alley’s David Rainey.
Finalists: Orlando Arriaga as Paul in The Counter (4th Wall Theatre Co.), Dain Geist as Hermann in Leopoldstadt (Main Street Theater), Matthew Keenan, as Iago in Othello (Classical Theater), Robby Matlock as T.J. in Coast Starlight (Main Street Theater), Spencer Plachy as Henry in The Lehman Trilogy (Stages) and Wesley Whitson as Prior in Angels in America (Rec Room Arts) and as Hamlet in Bedlam’s Hamlet (4th Wall Theatre Co.)
BEST ACTRESS
Winner: Michelle Elaine as Rose in Fences (Alley Theatre)
Actress Michelle Elaine has been on our radar for seasons. Even in her comedy roles, she fills her characters with depth and refinement and a wonderful sense of place. As a resident company member of the Alley, she has added grace to such varied plays as Dead Man’s Cell Phone, Primary Trust, Sense and Sensibility, and just last month The Girl on the Train, as the exasperated new wife who must put up with the stalkings of the ex-wife. Her double takes, wide-eyed of course with mouth agape in astonishment, were comic gems.
Her hell-on-earth boss in Ensemble’s Cylde’s, where each entrance was greeted with mayhem and terror by her ex-con cooks, but by utter delight from the audience, you loved to hate her; she was over-the-top funny in her gargoyle clothes and fright wigs as she taunted and sparred with her hapless employees. Naturally, she was awarded our Best Supporting Actress in 2023.
But as the seemingly stoic wife Rose of David Rainey’s Troy in the Alley’s sterling production of August Wilson’s Fences, Elaine came into her own. It was a revelation, a true breakout performance. Under Eileen Morris’ perceptive direction, Rose wants a fence around their faded property to keep her wayward husband in check, but then realizes that it keeps her in, too. And, at play’s end, she will stay but Troy must go if she is to be free. She might stand on the back porch and watch him with eagle eye as he blames others for his misfortunes, many of his own making, but watch her back stiffen and shoulders shift ever so slightly as her resolve grows. She is strong, always has been; no longer needing her philandering husband anymore.
Morris subtly moves the play to her, and her final outburst of frustration where she blasts Troy that he is “a womanless man” was one of last season’s most thrilling moments, the very definition of “sprezzatura,” effortless grace and strength.
Rose is complicated, but all her layered qualities were made abundantly clear through Elaine’s peerless performance. She made Rose’s victory our own.
Finalists: Elizabeth Bunch as Annie Wilkes in Misery (Alley Theatre), Faith Fossett as Katie in The Counter (4th Wall Theatre Co.), Kiya Green as Percola in The Bluest Eye (The Ensemble Theatre) and as Elsie in Mud Row (Stages) and Alyssa Marek as Elizabeth Noakakes in The Body Snatcher (Alley Theatre).
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Winner: Greg Dean as Roy Cohn in Angels in America (Rec Room Arts)
There’s something to be said for smarm. Not in defense, but in understanding. Iago has smarm, as does Lady Macbeth, Regina Hubbard in The Little Foxes has smarm, but in contemporary drama no one shines and bathes himself in it like the character of Roy Cohn in Tony Kushner’s American gay epic, Angels in America, Part I and II.
Full of vitriol and unwilling to accept that he has AIDS, NY lawyer Cohn drips pretense. He’s obsequious and mean. A bully, he gets what he wants through fawning flattery or, more likely, bullying. At the top of his profession and overly proud of his successes in prosecuting Julius and Ethel Rosenberg as cold war spies, and serving as special counsel on Senator Eugene McCarthy’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the U.S. Senate, on the lookout for communists in the government, Cohn ingratiated himself into the houses of power.
Under his own investigation for fraud and ethics, in Kushner’s version, he is seen in the hospital, dying from AIDS. A closeted gay, Cohn adamantly refuses to admit the diagnosis, and is petrified of the prognosis. Who better to play such a disreputable figure than Greg Dean, who plays smarm with a vengeance, as he barks and chews the hospital scenery, berating friends and orderlies as if they were beneath him. On the fringes in Part I, Millennium Approaches, he comes into his own in Part II, Perestroika. Wracked with pain and covered in sores, Dean forces us to confront the evil inside eating him away bit by bit. Haunted by the spirit of Ethel, he still refuses to see death before him. She’s just an illusion, a hallucination brought on by the drugs.
He anchors Part II as the man you love to hate. But his howls of pain gnaw at us. Why must anyone go through this? Even the sinful ones? Kushner says yes, Cohn must suffer. Dean, suffering tremendously, gives us a tinge of sympathy, not a lot, but enough to allay our own fears of dying. Whatever he does on stage, which is never short of magnificent, it’s a most powerful interpretation of a very conflicted man, facing death like the coward he always was.
Finalists: Timothy Eric as Gabriel in Fences (Alley Theatre) and as Soaphead Church in The Bluest Eye (The Ensemble Theatre), Brandon Morgan as Tio in Fat Ham (4th Wall Theatre Co.) and as Tyriek in Mud Row (Stages), Kyle Sturdivant as Tilikum in Beautiful Princess Disorder, (The Catastrophic Theatre)s, Lloyd Wayne Taylor as Atung in The Chinese Lady (Stages), Micah Weese as Caliban in The Tempest (Houston Shakespeare Festival), and Nat Zegree as Jerry Lee Lewis in The Million Dollar Quartet (Theatre Under the Stars).
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Winner: Meg Rodgers as Harper in Angels in America (Rec Room Arts)
During Part I of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, Millennium Approaches, Harper, a devout Mormon wife (Meg Rodgers), discovers through her Valium-induced hallucinations that her husband Joe is gay. It’s a devastating blow to the already fragile Harper, who falls into even deeper insecurity and budding insanity. She collapses on stage and wails the wail of the damned.
Betrayed by her faith, her husband, and her self-medicating, Rodgers is the epitome of fallen humanity, all hope abandoned. Her searing portrait of a woman lost was so heartfelt, Rodgers dissolved into the soul of the character. The 4th wall melted. There wasn’t an actress up there on the tiny stage, but an entire world encapsulated by a scream, a howl, a frightening illusion. Pushed away by her husband, believing herself unloved, Harper herself becomes haunted by a visitation by a snide travel agent booking her a trip to Antarctica.
Harper isn’t the only character in pain in Kushner’s rich epic of loss and life, but she’s perhaps the most poignant because her choices are not entirely hers alone. Rodgers’ deep portrait, bursting from inside, ignited the drama in new ways and showed us our own broken heart.
Finalists: Brittney Bush as Pecola in The Bluest Eye (The Ensemble Theatre), Elissa Cuellar as Lydia in That Drive Through Monterey (Stages),Cheney Moore as Liz in The Coast Starlight (Main Street Theater),Pantea Ommi as Roya in English (Alley Theatre), Angela Pinina as Joanne, Company (Garden Theatre), Kim Tobin-Lehl as Suzanne, in Eureka Day (4th Wall Theatre Co.) and Christy Watkins as Mrs. Gibbs in Our Town and as Gertrude/Ophelia in Bedlam’s Hamlet (4th Wall Theatre Co.)
BEST SET DESIGN
Winner: Tim Mackabee for Misery (Alley Theatre) and for Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Houston Broadway Theatre)
A house of a psycho in the backwoods of Maine and the parapets of the medieval Notre Dame cathedral. Let’s conjure them. No need, Tim Mackabee has placed them squarely in our imagination, and we’ll never see them the same way again.
For Annie Wilkes’ home in Misery, where she is keeping writer Paul prisoner until he finishes his latest novel just the way she wants it, we first see her bedroom with its granny wallpaper (which looks suspiciously like splattered blood), bedside tables, Victorian lamps, a bed ripe for tying up her victim, and large windows that tease with sunlight and freedom without. She’s a nurse, so the room is spic and span, no filler, quite clean.
When Paul makes his first attempt to flee, the stage revolves as he, in wheelchair, rolls painfully into her kitchen stocked with details so finely realized we could cook in there. There’s a staircase up to the second floor and the front door far away. It’s a mind-blowing reveal, the best of the season. A star turn.
Later, the stage revolves again, and miraculously, we’re outside the house looking at the front porch. How did design wizard Mackabee fit it all in? The perfect setting for a Steven King horror play: the mundane made creepy.
Next we’re off to Paris, old Paris, for the musical The Hunchback of Notre Dame, where deaf and deformed Quasimodo lives in the bell tower. He may be deformed, but his heart is pure. Now, we’re in state-of-the-art land where design is minimal but the projections mighty. Up a level, stage right, sits the orchestra, as if in their own cathedral apse, while down below in an angled foyer is the main playing area, with balcony and staircase where gargoyles can congregate. A gigantic rose window flies in, the balustrades are overlaid, as are the interior stone walls. All done without fuss or stagehands scurrying around.
When evil Frollo is defenestrated, his fall is vertiginous as the walls seem to fall with him as the actor rushes into the background. Very neat and clean, abetted by crisp lighting, but never far from minimal design becoming maximum. The look of both productions was very different – one, cluttered yet clean, like Annie; the other, bare and utilitarian until it was swarmed by choristers, dancing gypsies, gargoyles. Gorgeous work from Mackabee and his team, and most worthy of Best Set Design.
Finalists: Afsaneh Aayani for Leopoldstadt (Main Street Theater) and The Lehman Trilogy (Stages), Stefän Azizi for Angels in America (Rec Room Arts), Scott Bradley for Fences (Alley Theater), Mark A. Lewis for Eureka Day (4th Wall Theatre Co.) and Airline Highway (Dirt Dogs Theatre Co.), and Tatiana Vintu for The Counter (4th Wall Theatre Co. )
BEST BREAKTHROUGH
Winner: Anna Flynn as Lauren in Circle Mirror Transformation (Mighty Acorn Productions)
As one of five strangers taking an adult acting class, teenager Lauren undergoes the play’s biggest transformation. But by big we mean noticeable. Not flashy, not through some grand climax or gotcha moment. It’s a subtle, creeping, human kind of change that Anna Flynn delivers with tenderness and grace.
Detached at the outset, exhausted by the adults, shy, quiet and skeptical, Lauren is both stressed at home due to her parents fighting and stressed in the class she doesn’t feel will adequately prepare her to land the lead role in the high school play.
Flynn’s performance – withholding from the group and emotional walls – feels utterly organic. We know there is pain, yearning and the need to connect behind her shell and oversized clothes.
Slowly, as she participates in acting exercises with the other group members, Lauren gradually opens up, shedding her protective stance and it’s a joy to watch Flynn peel the layers off. With each step toward self-assuredness, our hearts open for her.
As if that isn’t enough to tap Flynn’s performance as our breakthrough winner, she also gets to deliver the play’s final moments, imagining her life ten years in the future. It’s a profound emotional resolution moment and Flynn allows it to breathe its beauty unforced. It’s a perfect example of tender acting doing justice to exquisitely tender writing – neither showing an ounce of undue sentimentality.
There’s nothing showy about our breakthrough performance winner this year. Instead, we saw raw talent doing what it does best – impress.
BEST COSTUMES
Winner: Colleen Grady for American Psycho (Houston Broadway Theatre)
A musical set amongst the superficial, status-obsessed 1980s era Wall Street power players better come dressed correctLY. After all, it’s not every musical that has a song rhyming Mahi Mahi with Isaac Mizrahi or red wine with Calvin Klein.
“Chanel, Gautier, or Giorgio Armani. Moschino, Alai or Normal Kamali” croons the chorus of the show’s joyous fashion number, ‘You are What You Wear.’ Funny as the song is, it’s nothing without Colleen Grady’s designer-inspired on-stage explosion of dresses. Metallic, short and/or tight, one shoulder or shoulder pads, jeweled embellishments, sequins – it was all there and it looked expensive, like the real deal.
And it wasn’t just the gals that got the upscale duds treatment. The financial fellas also dressed the part perfectly. Dark suits in lush fabrics showed off the men’s buff, workout-obsessed bodies. Designer ties, shoes and flashy watches showed off their bank accounts. You could smell the money coming from the stage.
Grady understood the assignment, as the kids say.
It takes a lot in a musical about a serial killer for the costumes to be the starring player, but in Grady’s hands, they often stole the show. At times sinister, at times riotous, these costumes did some heavy lifting and we, along with the audience, gasped loudly several times at the glorious excess of it all.
Finalists: Sandra Zhihan Jia in The Chinese Lady (Stages), Leah Smith in A Charlie Brown Christmas (Queensbury Theatre), Amber Stepanik in Leopoldstadt (Main Street Theater) and Alejo Vietti in The Importance of Being Earnest (Alley Theatre).
BEST LIGHTING
Winner: Seth Reiser for Misery (Alley Theatre)
Seth Reiser has designed lighting for artistic performances throughout the United States and abroad. Although originally from Houston (an Episcopal High School graduate) it wasn’t until he worked on Misery that he made his debut at the Alley Theatre.
And for someone with a background in opera, dance and music besides theater, the story of the famed writer trapped by a deranged fan in a secluded mountain cabin provided the perfect playground.
The story was creepy enough to begin with but Reiser enhanced that with muted lighting throughout the Colorado cabin. Notice the small wall mounted lights in the bedroom that do little to lessen the dimness of the surroundings. Paul Sheldon (Chris Hutchison) writes at a desk in the near darkness.
In the kitchen dining scene an overhead light is centered above the table where Paul and Annie Wilkes (Elizabeth Bunch) eat; we see them clearly but whatever’s in the dark corners remains unknown. Even the light on the front porch can’t overcome much of the darkness.
Top all that off with the scene where Annie is enraged by beridden Paul. We see her face clearly, but it’s the shadow cast on the wardrobe of herself and the chair she’s holding threateningly over her head that registers and seems to grow ever larger. All in all, a masterful execution by a lighting master.
Finalists: Rosa Cano for Our Town (4th Wall Theatre Co.), Alan C. Edwards for Fences ( Alley Theatre), Ash Farra for The Lehman Trilogy (Stages), Christina Giannelli for The Counter (4th Wall Theatre Co.), Edgar Guarjardo for Othello (Classical), Hanna Kay Johnson for Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune (Happy Hour Readings), Eric L. Marsh for Leopoldstadt (Main Street Theater) and Tyler Micoleau for The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Houston Broadway Theatre).
BEST SOUND
Winner: Shawn W. St. John for Leopoldstadt (Main Street Theater)
All those people, all that talking, the story of two upper class Jewish families in Vienna from 1900 to 1955 as seen in one, often crowded, living room. And yet in Main Street Theater’s Leopoldstadt under the careful sound direction of Shawn W. St. John, everything came across clearly, whether the actors’ lines were delivered as shouts or hushed hurried conversations.
Equally powerful, the background noises that mimicked the destruction of these families over time. The beautiful classical music sounds give way to blaring sirens and breaking glass as windows are smashed and the horrors of the Nazi reign overtake what had been the city highlighting European culture.
Shawn W. St. John is no stranger to the Houston Theater Awards. A finalist in 2024 for Sound Design for The Woman in Black (Main Street Theater) and 2018 for Rhinoceros (Catastrophic Theatre) and the Best Sound HTA winner in 2020 for The Diary of Anne Frank (Main Street Theater) and Baby Screams Miracle, (Catastrophic Theatre) he is employed regularly by theaters throughout the area. He knows the importance of sound and how telling it can be in both its presence and absence — enormously fitting for a Stoppard play about too many good people staying silent while madness reigned.
Finalists: John Gromada for The Da Vinci Code (Alley Theatre), Andrew Harper for The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Houston Broadway Theatre) and Ryan Thornton for Spamilton (Stages)
BEST ENSEMBLE CAST
Winner: Austin Atencio, Terri Branda, James Cardwell, Nadia Diamond, Shannon Emerick, Dain Geist, Kara Greenberg, Joel Grothe, Hannah Hall, Laura Kaldis, Jackelyn Kraitman, Ian Lewis, Clara Marsh, Scarlett Raven Clarabelle Marshall, Charley Moster, Meg Rodgers, Karen Ross, J.P. Stringer, Spencer Stringer, Julia Strug, Russell Tautenhahn, Zach Varela, Gigi White and Mike Yager in Leopoldstadt, (Main Street Theater)
Leopoldstadt made its regional premiere at Main Street this past spring and it would be nothing but understatement to say this was an ambitious undertaking for the theater. Not only were they dealing with a very large cast, but hundreds of lines and hours of rehearsal.
Fortunately, a Main Street Artistic Director Rebecca Greene Udden likes epic challenges. She’s especially surefooted in pacing larger casts so the stories they tell make sense to the audience.
This the kind of play that Main Street Theater does best. Besides Udden’s love of playwright Tom Stoppard and his language, Main Street excels at any sort of period piece that requires an astounding number of characters and story lines.
They were there to tell the more than 50 year story of the Merz and Jacobovicz families, two predominantly Jewish families of the middle to upper class in Vienna whose fortunes decline as the Nazis rise to power.
We see family members gather together at Christmas Day 1899 sitting down to holiday dinner. Some believe the best thing they can do is assimilate. The family patriarch Herman Mertz (Dan Geist) marries a Christian and converts. This, he thinks is the best path to survial. Other family members disagree. As it turns out, this is a moot point, assimilated or not, they are regarded as Jews and marched away by the Nazis.
This was the final play written by Stoppard. It won the Tony Award following its opening on Broadway in 2022. Autobiographical in part — Stoppard was late in discovering he had Jewish ancestors — it is immensely affecting, especially when the right actors are cast in it.
Main Street had the right director and the right cast. Its show sold out repeatedly and its run had to be extended twice to meet the demand. Sir Tom Stoppard would be proud.
Finalists: Elizabeth Marshall Black, Greg Dean, Matthew Jamison, Avery Vonn Kenyatta, Susan O. Koozin, Meg Rodgers, Wesley Whitson and Nathaniel Wilson in Angels in America (Rec Room Arts); Laine Chan, Nick Farco, Philip Lehl, Jasmine Renee Thomas and Kim Tobin-Lehl in Eureka Day (4th Wall Theatre Co. ); Ciara Anderson, Tyler Ray Lewis, Brandon J. Morgan, Joseph “Joe P” Palmore, Terri Renee, ShaWanna Renee Rivon and Jarred Tettey in Fat Ham (4th Wall Theatre Co.); Jaylon Bolden, Jazmyn Bolden, Estée Burks, Brittny Bush, Caprice Carter, Timothy Eric, Kiya Green, Rita L. Hughes, Kory LaQuess Pullam, and Alayna Sylvester in The Bluest Eye (The Ensemble Theatre) and Orlando Arriaga, Robby Matlock and and Spencer Plachy in The Lehman Trilogy (Stages).
BEST NEW PLAY/PRODUCTION
Winner: Crime and Punishment: 2026 by Jayme McGhan, A.D. Players
What do you do with a classic of Russian literature that’s thick as a Kremlin wall and is renowned for its psychological insight and deals heavily with murder, the aftermath of crushing guilt, and redemption?
If you’re artistic director at A.D. Players, you just sit right down and adapt it. That’s exactly what Jayme McGhan did, and his “favorite book” turned into a majestic theatrical experience that brilliantly encapsulated Fyodor Dostoevsky’s 1866 novel Crime and Punishment. Appending “2026” to his title, McGhan overlaid the adaptation with state-of-the-art projections and Kirk A. Domer’s abstract cubist set that had panels raised to reveal rooms behind, or Raskolnikov’s impoverished apartment bedroom that slid out above the stage, teetering on the edge like our anti-hero. Projections of cityscapes, tech info, and blurred action zoomed around the set, the impoverished Russians used cell phones, and everyone was dressed in contemporary grung.
A technical wonder, yet grounded under McGhan’s sterling sense of drama, the exuberant actors doubled, even tripled up, for the myriad characters in this teeming work, but the intimacy of family, friends, and nemeses was never short-changed. You knew who they were, yet the switching of actors gave potent meaning to Raskolnikov gradual madness and isolation. The entire show bubbled with invention and discovery, very now and very hot, unlike any other prior production from A.D. Players, all sublimely directed by the sure and steady hand of Sophia Watt of Rec Room Arts fame. It was a mighty production, beautifully conceived and executed. With judicious pruning, the show should go to Broadway; it was that exceptional.
Finalists: Dear Alien by Liz Duffy Adams (Alley Theatre), That Drive Through Monterey by Matthew Paul Olmos (Stages) and The Body Snatcher by Katie Forgette (Alley Theatre).
FUNNIEST THEATER MOMENT
Winner: Brandon Morgan’s weed-induced monologue about gingerbread fellatio in Fat Ham (4th Wall Theatre Co.)
What if you chose pleasure over harm and imagined the world differently? A world where you stop being miserable to make others happy and instead choose to be happy just being yourself?
It’s a profound notion that Fat Ham playwright James Ijames allows the character of Tio to run with. But this is Tio we’re talking about. A character blissfully hopped up on his beloved weed for the duration of the show. Even deep insights are going to be wacky.
And you can’t get wackier than the inspiration for Tio’s pronouncement, namely a dream he recalls where a gingerbread man from a video game performs fellatio on him.
Put a hilarious piece of writing in the hands of Brandon Morgan, one of our most brilliant comedic actors, and you have fire.
Morgan squeezed the monologue for every ounce of funny, drawing it out with perfect escalation, making us feel as stoned as he was. We laughed, snorted, stared in disbelief that Morgan was still rambling on with more to give. It was sweet, tender, earnest, deeply meaningful and side-splittingly funny—a show stopper and this season’s favorite funny moment.
Finalist: The livestream parent/teacher meeting in Eureka Day (4th Wall Theatre Co.) featuring Philip Lehl, Kim Tobin-Lehl, Nick Farco, Laine Chan and Jasmine Renee Thomas.
BEST OMNI PERFORMER
Winner: Kiya Green
Kiya Green first caught our eye last season as part of the excellent ensemble in the female basketball drama, Flex, at The Ensemble Theatre. Little did we know the explosive range she would show this season in two diversely challenging roles.
As Elsie in Dominique Morisseau’s family drama Mud Row (Stages), Green tackled class and race as a 1960s Black woman trying to elevate herself from the legacy of family disgrace. While her sister fights for rights, Elsie’s ambition is to land a “highfalutin gentleman”. One that will raise her status and erase a past that brings nothing but embarrassment.
Elsie’s shame and hurt painfully oozed out of Green in everything from her tense posture to her clipped manner of speaking. This was a character trying to hold on to hope as tightly as she could and Green did double duty playing it tough while revealing her character’s underpinnings of damage and vulnerability.
When she finally does let go in a moment of raw rage directed at her sister, Green broke our hearts by exposing how broken and in need of family love Elise was. We saw her mistakes and wished her well, but thanks to Green’s tender stewardship of this ultimately fragile woman, we also understood, if not agreed with, Elsie’s choices.
Later in the season, Green gifted us with an even bigger tour de force as Pecola, the young star of The Ensemble Theatre’s production of Nobel Prize-winning Toni Morrison’s first novel, The Bluest Eye.
Again, dealing with race and the desire to be something different, Green’s Depression-era character has no wealthy man to save her. Instead, she has an unloving mother who scolds her, an abusive father who crosses the unthinkable line and a community who labels her ugly and untouchable for as long as she can remember.
Playing a child so beset by tragedy is no small feat, but when Percola screamed, “I want to disappear,” Green gave us pure emotion. If only she had blue eyes, she prayed, “truly bluey nice eyes,” everything would be different. She wouldn’t be invisible. She’d be pretty, accepted, and loved.
Oh, how we hurt for this poor child. Oh, how we dreamt with her for a better life. Oh, how Green, an adult, disappeared into this little girl and didn’t fall prey to any cute onstage tactics. This is how you play a child. Fully immersed and confident in her choices, allowing the innocence to come organically.
With two powerhouse performances this season in two equally complex and dramatically difficult roles, it felt like Green stayed present in our minds long after curtain. We look forward to seeing what else she can do and where else she’ll do it.
BEST TROUPER
Winner: Chris Hutchinson for his many beatings (Alley Theatre)
If you didn’t have Chris Hutchison down to his undies beating himself with leather whips on your Bingo card this season, you obviously didn’t realize the Alley was producing the stage adaptation of The DaVinci Code.
Yes, yes, the show had mystery and religion, codes and converts, silliness and serious swaths, but let’s be honest – Hutchison as Opus Dei monk, Silas, giving himself a good flagellation was the best part of the show, no matter if you found it funny, disturbing or both.
Sure, we wish he put more muscle into it – but hey, doing this night after night after matinee is no small feat and no one wants an actor scarred for life.
Besides, the real beating was to come later in the season from Hutchison’s own wife no less – thankfully onstage in a role opposite him in the psycho-thriller, Misery.
We’ve seen Hutchinson act opposite Elizabeth Bunch many times over the years. Still, there was something especially delicious about watching her beat the crap out of him as Annie, a fanatical fan who takes hostage the famous novelist Paul.
Hutchison endures endless torture for much of the play, including that famous sledgehammer ankle-hobbling scene. Terrific! Take that, we thought. But only because Hutchison played it so well.
After all these blows, one hopes Hutchison got wrapped in cotton batting whilst getting bathed in puppy kisses and listening to soothing rainfall from a warm, dry room. After all, being the season’s trouper was hard work.
BEST CHOREOGRAPHY
Winner: Valarie Rachelle for Spamilton (Stages)
What do you do with a sassy, snappy show like Spamilton but supply it with even more sass and snap in the dancing? As Variety might have said in an old review, “Wowza!” Valerie Rachelle kicked Gerald Alessandrini’s satire into the stratosphere. There were more fantastic hip-hop moves than a downtown poetry slam to highlight the hot sauce of the lyrics.
And the quintet of ultra-talented actors never stopped moving. They were ablaze, and Stages’ Sterling Stage rocked, as did the appreciative audience who bopped along in rhythm to the singers’ fancy footwork and whiplash port de bras. Even if there were no wickedly evil spell cast by Alessandrini’s genius skewering of Lin Manuel-Miranda’s musical and other Broadway classics, Rachelle superbly augmented the hilarity by the simple matter of people moving to the music. It was daring, tricky, invigorating, and very now. And the best.
Finalists: Kyle Craig-Bogard for Brother Andrew (A.D. Players), Hope Easterbrook for The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Houston Broadway Theatre), Aisha Ussery for Take the Soul Train to Christmas (The Ensemble Theatre) and Bethany White for A Charlie Brown Christmas (Queensbury Theatre).
BEST DIRECTOR OF A PLAY
Winner: Eileen J. Morris for The Bluest Eye (The Ensemble Theatre) and Fences (Alley Theatre)
This year had so many outstanding directors, it was difficult to narrow down the finalists, much less pick among the short list one winner. But seasoned director Eileen J. Morris took on the work of two of the greatest American writers, Toni Morrison and August Wilson, and her direction in two outstanding productions was superlative. The Bluest Eye at The Ensemble Theatre (where she is Artistic Director and has directed many plays by Wilson) was a moving and poignant adaptation of Morrison’s first novel and addressed sensitive issues ranging from domestic violence to incest with empathy and artistic excellence. And her direction of Wilson’s iconic Fences at the Alley featured excellent performances and pitch perfect pacing.
Her experience and profound understanding of human suffering and psychology translate into direction that respects the artistic vision of the authors while still bringing a fresh perspective to the characters and places that these plays bring to life. Heavy issues—including racism, multi-generational trauma, and the forces of individual and collective history—are made accessible to audiences without ever minimizing the story or trivializing the subject matter.
What a gift to Houston to see these two plays—so fraught with conflict—be directed with Morris’s signature excellence and aplomb.
Finalists: Jennifer Dean for Eureka Day (4th Wall Theatre Co.), Rebecca Green Udden for Leopoldstadt (Main Street Theater), Matt Hune and Sophia Watt, Angels in America (Rec Room), Derek Charles Livingston, The Lehman Trilogy (Stages) and Fat Ham (4th Wall Theatre Co.) and Evren Odeikan, English (Alley Theatre).
BEST MUSICAL
Winner: Spamilton: An American Parody (Stages)
The satirical delights of Spamilton at Stages were not just juvenile riffs, even though almost every moment was hysterically funny. Instead, we had hard-hitting barbs against the world of Broadway in general, as well as plenty of pointed satire aimed at specific iconic Broadway shows.
Adding to the fun, this production had no problem making fun of Hamilton itself, from the parodic songs to the recognizable costumes, and it was entertainment bliss from the opening number to the very last moment. Musical comedy can sometimes feel like a high-wire act, but nothing fell flat in this show.
Mariah Baillie, who has shined in other Stages productions, was able to share her amazing vocals, along with the rest of the spot-on performances of the entire ensemble. Baillie didn’t just play Angelica and Eliza from the Broadway hit, but also Bernadette Peters, Barbra Streisand and Liza Minnelli, among others—no small musical feat.
It is riveting musical theater, taking us through the journey of Lin-Manuel Miranda as he comes up with a way to break through the conventional forms of traditional Broadway and create the groundbreaking and award-winning Hamilton. Tony Award winner Gerard Alessandrini (of Forbidden Broadway fame) draws on well-known characters from Hamilton to spoof not only that play, but really a whole world of Broadway productions. And boy does it entertain while doing it under the deft co-direction of Derek Charles Livingston and Valerie Rachelle. Funny and thrilling, this parody sizzles, raps, and sings with performers that can do it all, and in multiple roles. Along with Baillie, Jaylon Bolden, Brandon Lozano, Jalen Tinsley, and Tristan Flores made for a production that had superlative artists that had you laughing so much you didn’t want it to end.
Finalists: American Psycho (Houston Broadway Theatre), Brother Andrew, (A.D. Players), Company (Garden Theatre), The Chosen Ones (Thunderclap Productions) Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat ( A.D. Players), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Houston Broadway Theatre) and 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (Theatre Under the Stars).
BEST PLAY/PRODUCTION
Winner: Eureka Day (4th Wall Theatre Co.)
Watching Eureka Day at Spring Street Studios in fall 2025, it’s a safe bet that a chunk of the audience at every performance was amazed that playwright Jonathan Spector had jumped on the suddenly heated-up vaccine wars so quickly and so deftly. Talk about “ripped from the headlines.”
Except that it wasn’t – of the moment that is. He started writing it in 2016 and it wasn’t presented on stage till 2018. That’s pre-Pandemic. It did all right, but it wasn’t until the COVID-effect and the accompanying vaccines that audiences really wanted to see this play. It went on to win the Tony Award in 2025 for Best Revival of a Play.
Most of these 4th Wall audience members also probably didn’t know that they weren’t seeing the original play. In a true story that has become theater legend, Spector rewrote his script because of too much laughter.
In Eureka Day, cases of mumps are on the rise and the local health department had put its foot down. If children are going to attend class, they must be vaccinated. This confounds this group whose members are split on the issue. They cannot reach their usual comfortable unanimity because this isn’t a time when they can let everyone do their own thing.
Hating confrontation, they punt the matter to their parents at large. They set up a live stream, asking every parent at the liberal private school to weigh in. They gather at a desk to observe the incoming comments together. Behind them, a drop-down screen shows the audience the back and forth exchanges from school parents complete with emojis. It all starts politely enough but gets nastier and nastier until it explodes.
In Spector’s original version these actors each had lines to say while the live stream played on. But the audience laughter at live stream was so continuous and loud, that no one could hear what the actors were saying. So, Spector cut most of that dialogue.
Spector set his play in Berkeley specifically because that was what he knew. The liberal pretensions of the group at the private school are fodder for his satire but so is the danger of taking social media at face value, as if the lies it sometimes carries shouldn’t be examined and dismantled. And of taking opinions and declaring them facts.
A young mother doesn’t vaccinate her daughter because she’s read it could be bad. She takes her infectious daughter to school and to another parent’s house where the girl plays with his son and gives him the mumps. He suffers a hearing loss. Another mother is certain, without proof, that a vaccine killed her child. So she doesn’t want any mandate to vaccinate at the school she helped found.
How much of a shock it is to learn that people you know, respect, perhaps love, who agree with you on so many things, do not believe in vaccination? Where does personal freedom butt up against the needs of a community?
As we’ve said elsewhere, there were a lot of great plays in Houston theaters in the 2025-26 season and we have paid respect to many of them in the Houston Theater Awards this year. Eureka Day told a dramatic story. Yes it is singular to a certain type of West Coast school and culture. But anyone who’s been involved in education and parent committees, whether private or public schools, had to nod along the way in recognition at some of the lines that ran particularly true whenever a group is trying to find out what the “right” thing is to do.
By pointing to absurdity and dressing it up with humor, Eureka Day reached many more people than it might have otherwise and gave us all something lasting to think about. And for a moment, we could laugh about it.
Finalists: Angels in America (Rec Room), Crime and Punishment (A.D. Players), English (Alley Theatre), Lehman Trilogy (Stages), Leopoldstadt (Main StreetTheater), Mud Row, (Stages) and The Bluest Eye (The Ensemble Theatre).
BEST TOURING PRODUCTION
Winner: Water for Elephants (Broadway at the Hobby Center)
You didn’t have to read the novel or see the movie to love this touring production of Water for Elephants that took the Hobby Center by storm with its stirring story line, wonderful performers, and incredible choreography, spot-on costumes, and striking sets. There was a lot of competition for all of these elements this year, but this show was the whole package.
Water for Elephants handled a historical romance all within a three-ring circus hitting their marks with the set and all of the technical elements along with triple-threat performers who could act, sing, and dance. The physical elements of representing animals and train travel alone were a marvel to see; but the convincing portrayals of characters with impressive vocal performances put this show in a class by itself.
Helen Krushinski leading as Marlena was a marvel in her debut on a national tour, nailing not only her role as an actress, but also acing the challenging acrobatics and musical numbers. It was mesmerizing to watch. Yet the entire company of more than 50 people contributed to this moving story set in the 1930s, capturing the historical context of a bygone way of life with original puppetry, memorable characters, searing songs, and surprising acrobatics that brought this show to a whole new level for touring productions.
Finalists: Life of Pi (Broadway at the Hobby), Moulin Rouge (Broadway at the Hobby), Some Like It Hot (Broadway at the Hobby Center) and The Outsider (Broadway at the Hobby).
BEST ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
Winner: Jennifer Dean (4th Wall Theatre Co.)
The 2025-26 theater season was the second full season that Jennifer Dean, the artistic director at 4th Wall Theatre Co., oversaw. Any fears that there would be a sophomore slump were quickly dispelled.
Whether it’s a magic touch or just plain feistiness, Dean was able to secure the rights to shows that several theaters wanted to put on stage. Case in point: Eureka Day which just won the 2025 Tony Award for Best Revival. And then Fat Ham, the Pulitzer Prize-winning retooling of Shakespeare’s Hamlet by James Ijames that moved its action to a Southern backyard BBQ and made the title character an overweight, gay, Black man.
The stage at Studio 101 at Spring Street Studios is small — or “intimate” as theaters prefer to say –but 4th Wall has been able to get some of the biggest gets to put on the stage there.
As one frequent theater-goer we know remarked, the Houston 2025-26 theater season was an especially strong one but when it came right down to it, she was most excited about seeing the shows at 4th Wall. It was the theater version of Appointment TV from pre-streaming days. You had to be there and if not on Opening Night, then as soon as possible after.
The season opened with Eureka Day with a well-meaning but ultimately contentious private school board copes with the question of mandatory vaccinations while trying to make everyone happy. A live stream reaching out to all the parents for comments goes ridiculously awry when politeness devolves into the kind of language not seen or heard at the most raucous of PTA meetings, evoking seven minutes of unrestrained audience laughter.
After repeated attempts, Dean got the rights to Fat Ham but says she knew she wasn’t the one to direct it. So, she asked Derek Charles Livingston, Artistic Director at Houston’s Stages theater, whose background includes his time as Director of New Play Development and Interim Artistic Director at the Utah Shakespeare Festival. He knew the play – he’d wanted it for his theater – and was able to step in with the knowledge and background needed to help make the production stellar.
Between these comedic bookends, were Our Town, the Thornton Wilder classic about life and death in Grover’s Corners that went on in November and last February’s The Counter (2024) a slow-boiling thriller about a lonely waitress and a retired firefighter who reaches out to her for friendship, while asking her to help him die.
In all: A season’s program filled with Tony Awards and Pulitzer Prize plays, comedy with hard edges and drama with enough humor to allow audiences to take a breath. Dean’s smart programming paid off once again enabling 4th Wall Theatre Co. to punch way above its weight class.
Finalists: Rebecca Greene Udden ( Main Street Theater), Derek Charles Livingston, (Stages), Jayme McGhan (A.D. Players), Matt Hune (Rec Room Arts) and Eileen Morris (The Ensemble Theatre).
BEST SEASON
Winner: Stages
What a diverse season for Stages. Under Artistic Director Derek Charles Livingston there was plenty to like, plenty to admire, plenty to discuss afterward. Where to start? Other than its one-woman poignant comedy starring Houston’s favorite catechism teacher, Denise Fennell, as The Bride, or Does This Dress Make me Look Married in October, followed by Holland Vavra’s one-woman musical reminiscence Broadway and Beyond: Celebrating 30 Shows, both sure-fire crowd-pleasers, the company graced us with wondrous product, always something different and thought-provoking.
The season opened on a very high note indeed with a glorious production of Stefano Massini’s The Lehman Trilogy, Could it be sustained?
Why, of course. In no particular order, that was followed by the fascinating historical document The Chinese Lady with its silk embroidery, foot binding, and show biz nightmares; the rowdy comedy Mud Row about inheritance (not like the tragedy of inheritance that was Lehman); the introspection of self-help brought by Tiny Beautiful Things; the nostalgic radio-inspired It’s a Wonderful Life; the haunting world premiere of Matthew Paul Olmos’ that drive thru Monterey; and finally, Gerald Alessandrini’s hilarious spoof Spamilton that lovingly mocked all things Broadway and all things Lin-Manuel Miranda. There was certainly something for everybody at Stages. Each one was tastefully produced, acted by Houston’s finest, and done with imagination and finesse. Who could ask for anything more?
Finalists: Alley Theatre, Main Street Theater, Rec Room Arts and 4th Wall Theatre Co.
