Best Actress in a Play
Gena Bardwell in The Glass Menagerie
Except for pointlessly resetting the play in Kansas City instead of Tennessee Williams' own St. Louis, The Coterie's all-black casting of the classic The Glass Menagerie found its heart and soul carried in Gena Bardwell's Amanda. Fiercely defending her pathologically shy daughter while admonishing her unsettled son, Bardwell had all of Amanda's bitchiness and loneliness simultaneously etched into her face. And when the gentleman caller finally arrived, Bardwell became a wretched ingenue, unintentionally sealing her family in a cask of horror.