It takes a special kind of talent to bring depth and texture to good-guy protagonists, and Jeremy DeCarlos continued to show that gift as Reuben Clark, the hero of Blue. We've seen that ability since his college days at Winthrop when he starred in Topdog/Underdog and later when Take Me Out marked his Charlotte debut in 2004. But what about effortful character roles? DeCarlos proved he could cover that end of the spectrum with a stunning trio of comic portraits in Southern Rapture. There was the fire-breathing homophobic Rev. Dupree, the gay ultracool genius playwright Anton Finewitz, and the reluctant hero Mickey Stedman, the actor whose ding-dong was headline news at the height of Charlotte's most infamous arts controversy. Choosing the best of those portraits was harder than picking De Carlos as our winner.