Winners For

Best Actress

When casting like this falls into your lap, it's a gift. Deborah L. Sherman has said she has a history of mental illness in her family, including bipolar disorder, which undoubtedly helped her absorb the dangerous mood swings of Melinda, the bipolar wife of a pandering politician in Side Effects. Whether she was slinking about their immaculate l...

In Djanet Sears's racially and sexually charged Harlem Duet, Christina Alexander of the M Ensemble portrayed Billie, a woman scorned by her man and betrayed by her mind. While dealing with her husband Othello leaving her for his white co-worker, Billie's mind is in constant flux, unstable and deteriorating, while an uneasiness in her perspective...

The song "Whatever Lola Wants" from Damn Yankees has become American pop culture's iconic femme-fatale number, and Chryssie Whitehead's performance as Lola, the devil's henchbabe, in the 5th Avenue Theatre's April production was enough to put all thoughts of Sofia Vergara and Diet Pepsi commercials out of the audience's head. With a Vargas-girl ...

Under director (and OC Weekly arts writer) Dave Barton's direction, every character in Mark Ravenhill's wickedly funny pool (no water) carried his or her own bright torch. But the one who shined the brightest in this Monkey Wrench Collective production at South Coast Repertory was Lamprinos, in the lead role of a successful visual artist whose f...