Best New Play clean/through by Miki Johnson (Catastrophic Theatre)

Many Houston fans (us included) miss seeing Miki Johnson, an extremely talented actor, perform on stage. These days, she's Catastrophic Theatre's playwright-in-residence. The trade-off has been that she's written some breathtakingly beautiful and well-crafted plays, including this year's winner for Best New Play, clean/through. (Johnson previously won this award for her debut play, American Falls.) The story of a couple struggling to stay together as they get clean and sober wasn't pretty (drug addition rarely is), but gosh was it powerful. Directed by Jason Nodler, Catastrophic's artistic director, the obviously complex story was seamless. Johnson kept the construction of the work -- the nuts and bolts of how she created living, breathing characters and how she built intricate, intense scenes -- firmly beneath a layer of emotion and, at times, desperation. There wasn't a happily-ever-after ending; instead, Johnson left her characters at a new beginning.

Finalists: Middletown by Will Eno (Catastrophic Theatre) and Rome by John Harvey (Mildred's Umbrella Theater Company).

Best Ensemble Theater Cast You Can't Take It With You (Alley Theatre)

Ensemble casts, by their nature, have many elements, many chances for most of the actors to have star turns. Sometimes it's a band of car thieves, military men or spies working in carefully sequenced, precisely choreographed movements. In the case of You Can't Take It With You, it's a bunch of loonies whose delightful if unusual approach to living life to its fullest initially disguises the ultimate craft that went into making this work by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman. Alley Theatre company actors embraced this comedy-drama with elan to open their 2013 season. Characters rush about, doors slam, people enter, fireworks erupt in the basement, gags are set up and the confusion is comforting. People come to dinner and end up staying for years. As critic D.L. Groover wrote in his review: "This is a play for actors, and Hart and Kaufman supply a fabulous who's who of nonconformists for the Alley regulars to sink their teeth into and gobble up. The large company, on the same wavelength thanks to director Sanford Robbins and his whiplash pacing, has a very good time. We do, too."

Finalists: Anna Christie (Theatre Southwest), Into the Woods (Main Street Theater) and Rome (Mildred's Umbrella Theater Company).

Best Director Seth Gordon for The Whipping Man (Stages Repertory Theatre)

Anyone who recently directed an Arabic production in Cairo of Thornton Wilder's Our Town, the most American of plays, deserves our attention. If that same man recently directs Matthew Lopez's blistering The Whipping Man (2011), theater's newest all-American play, he deserves our honor (see Best Play/ Production above). Associate artistic director at The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, Gordon previously oversaw Stages' production of Yazmina Reza's interior monologue-heavy The Unexpected Man. There's nothing interior about The Whipping Man. All psychic scars are definitely on the exterior, paraded for all to see. Three men -- two former slaves, one former master's son -- confront the past and the future in a world turned upside down. Slaves are suddenly free, rudderless; masters are impotent, clueless. No one knows which way to go. Blazing and dramatic, intimate yet epic in theme, The Whipping Man transforms dry history into the personal. With a sure hand, Gordon allows the play to spark and roar on its own terms. Comedy bubbles to the surface -- the horse meat dinner scene is a marvel of slapstick timing, growing funnier as each new chew gets a bigger laugh, but it's the interactions of the three men that's always on the front burner: Simon (Shawn Hamilton, see Best Actor, above), stalwart, faithful house servant; John (Joseph Palmore), opportunistic petty thief and boyhood friend of Caleb (Ross Bautsch), the bedridden master's son whose leg will be amputated in a strikingly horrific scene that's all the more gory for not depicting Simon's rusty saw operation but by Simon's bloody description of what will happen. Lopez's drama gets resplendent, truthful treatment under Gordon's exceptional watchful eye. Everything has coalesced -- acting, set, lighting, sound and especially direction -- to give us an unforgettable portrait of a country growing up.

Finalists: Jennifer Decker for Rome (Mildred's Umbrella Theater Company), Tom Stell for Ruined (Obsidian Art Space), John Tyson for The Good Thief (Stark Naked Theatre Company) and Brandon Weinbrenner for Venus in Fur (Alley Theatre).

Best Artistic Directors Philip Lehl and Kim Tobin (Stark Naked Theatre)

Artistic directors have one of the toughest jobs in theater. They provide the company's vision. They oversee productions and bring actors, directors and designers (each of which has a vision of his or her own) together in a cohesive, functional family for the length of the show's run. And, as the case with Stark Naked Theatre's Philip Lehl and Kim Tobin, they also act, direct and teach. Oh, and sometimes they work the ticket booth or staff the concession stand at intermission. We've seen Lehl and Tobin, winners of the Houston Press MasterMinds Award in 2013, nurture and grow Stark Naked Theatre Company from a small company with ambitious artistic goals to a powerhouse leader in the theater community. One of the most noteworthy productions of the last season was Stark Naked's Faith Healer. It was a three-person show, with Lehl, Tobin and John Tyson (who also directed) as characters telling different versions of the same story. It was a signature Stark Naked production. It gave Tyson the opportunity to both act and direct (he did both wonderfully), and its goal wasn't to fill the seats, but to fill the stage (which it did especially well). Lehl and Tobin care about their audiences. More importantly, they don't underestimate them. They produce smart, challenging work. Oh, and they care about their actors, too. Stark Naked is one of the few small theaters in the city that pays all of its actors.

Finalists: Jennifer Decker (Mildred's Umbrella Theater Company), John Johnson (Classical Theatre), Jason Nodler (Catastrophic Theatre) and Patrick Summers (Houston Grand Opera).

Best Season Alley Theatre

Beginning with the Pulitzer-Prize winner You Can't Take it With You with its Alley Company cast that hit all its marks, and the sexy and provocative Venus in Fur with its startling twists of personality and perspective, Alley Theatre started its 2013-14 season strong and rarely faltered along the way. The Alley followed up with the gripping Other Desert Cities, equal parts politics and parenthood, and the compelling Freud's Last Session with just two actors, James Black and Jay Sullivan, parrying in a Victorian room. Theresa Rebeck's new play Fool came to town as a world premiere and there was time out for a fun step into Alan Ayckbourn's science fiction comedy Communicating Doors before 2013 Tony's winner Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike gave us Chekhov with a twist as well as a look at the amazing flexibility of one of its stars. And then Good People took us into a sad South Boston setting with Elizabeth Bunch as Margie Walsh, negotiating a tough world as best she can with grace in unexpected places. Throughout, audiences were seeing consistently compelling works performed by actors who clearly know, understand and love what they are doing. The Alley is known as the big dog in town; this year it lived up to that moniker.

Finalists: Houston Grand Opera, Main Street Theater, Stages Repertory Theatre and Stark Naked Theatre Company.