Buntport was a lock for this award — but for which of the season's offerings? The sad-funny Sweet Tooth? Wake, a profound musing on love and time inspired by Shakespeare's The Tempest? In the end, inspired by the images and scraps of dialogue that keep coming to mind months after the play's closing, we decided on Tommy Lee Jones Goes to Opera Alone, which featured an ungainly five-foot-tall puppet animated by four Buntporters as Jones; a lively waitress called Jane; and a lot of talk about cowboy boots, the evolution of human speech, and opera. The production was absorbing, entertaining, funny yet profound.