Best Original Script

This is a play about the sole survivor of a nuclear holocaust. Or about a man playing that survivor on a stage. Then again, the man may be Adam, tending the Garden of Eden. There's a woman directing the play. Sometimes she's helpful, sometimes mocking, sometimes downright capricious. Maybe she's God. Israeli director Ami Dayan's The End, created in collaboration with Open Theatre alumna Lee Worley, is an exploration of human nature and the consolations of art. It pays homage to Shakespeare, Chekhov and Beckett and is particularly relevant now, as the Middle East threatens to burst into flames. In production at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, the play packed the kind of wallop that sent you out of the theater thoughtful, dazed and oddly elated.