Best Theater Company

For its second full year under artistic director Jasson Minadakis, ACTOR’S EXPRESS lived up to its rep as Atlanta’s most vital theatrical venue. Bookended by the darkly comic Killer Joe (the season’s most delightfully disturbing play) and the more challenging examination of Southern character, Hazard County, Actor’s Express produced the plays most likely to start arguments — in a good way. Even the shows that didn’t quite click, like The Love Song of J. Robert Oppenheimer, had more ambition and ideas than most other playhouses’ best successes.
887 W. Marietta St., Suite J-10. 404-607-7469. www.actorsexpress.com.

You usually see hot new plays emerge from little black box theaters, not a city’s biggest playhouse. But this year, the ALLIANCE THEATRE served as a launching pad for two big, Broadway-bound, Southern-themed world premieres: The Color Purple musical and The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. Plus, thanks to a $1.5 million gift from the Kendeda Fund, the Alliance permanently established its Graduate Playwriting Competition to develop bold new works like the Cuban melodrama Day of the Kings. The Alliance did more than pay lip service to the idea that new plays deserve resources.
1280 Peachtree St. 404-733-5000. www.alliancetheatre.org.

The Atlanta theater scene’s most impressive newcomer of the past year wasn’t a person but a place. Theatrical Outfit’s new permanent home, the 200-seat BALZER THEATRE, boasts a slick art deco design, a huge stage, a great sound system and not a bad seat in the house. The Balzer Theatre gives skittish audiences more than enough reason to venture downtown so long as Theatrical Outfit stages shows such as Hank Williams: Lost Highway that live up to it.
84 Luckie St. 404-651-4727. www.theatricaloutfit.org.

Little Five Points' HORIZON THEATRE may have hit on an equation for artistic and popular satisfaction. Artistic directors Lisa and Jeff Adler stage smart contemporary scripts like "Boy Gets Girl" and the sublime "Madame Melville", seek the hits of the future with the New South for the New Century Play Festival, and subsidize the New South event with revivals of hits like "I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change". Here's hoping the winning formula lasts.

"1083 Austin Ave. 404-584-7450. www.horizontheatre.com."