Credit: Photo by Colleen Durkin; Products provided by: fatsos, unique, Stanley's Fruit & Vegetables

Critics' Picks

Best theatrical couple

Best test of the structural soundness of audience members’ backsides

Best theatrical mob action

Best advice from an artistic director

Best new off-Loop combo for dinner and a show, fringe division

Best theatrical collaboration

Best underground voguer and breakdancer

Best new comedy festival

Best comedy club located in a pizzeria

Best storytelling series for potty humor

Best living Vivian Maier

Best citizen-thinker

Best rehab of a public housing project into artists’ housing

Best exhibit for bashing a Jeff Koons balloon dog

Best small museum, Skokie division

Best new video installation

Best archival discovery

Best business counterstrike

Best conflict of interest

Best secret microcinema

Best local film company that doesn’t make films

Best new local production (documentary)

Best new local production (drama)

Best second-run house

Best creative rivalry

Readers Poll

Best movie theater

Best theater company

Best stand-up comic

Best sketch/improv troupe

Best venue for stand-up

Best visual artist

Best street artist

Best photographer

Best gallery

Best actor

Best actress

Best stage director

Best playwright

Best musical

Best play

Best film festival

Best film programming

Best nonfiction writer

Best novelist

Best literary event

Best dance troupe

Best magician