Poets learn about more than rhymes in contest-winning play

The winner of Heller's national playwrighting contest for this year, the plays pairs Lucy and Todd, college students who have been assigned to write a poem together.

There is one obstacle, however: They loathe one another.

Lucy (played by newcomer Brittany Diane Sutton) is a straight-A student, prim, proper and motivated. Todd (Owen Froeschle) is a frat boy/party animal, a vulgarian looking for an easy grade.

A perfect example of this oil and water mix comes out in the preparatory stages of their assignment. The teacher has given them some words that must be used in their poem. The students must each come up with one word of their own to fit in.

Lucy chooses "sesquicentennial." Todd opts for "vagina."

There's wit and humor in the work as the teacher rejects their efforts time and again, sending them back to a process in which the pair learn something about themselves, says director D. Bruce Lewis.

"They do begin to realize over time that they're not as different as they originally thought. She comes to realize that he's brighter than she thought, and he realizes she's not as uptight and frigid as he first thought," Lewis said, laughing.

The pair also learns how to write a SESTINA.

A what? The dictionary says it's a poem of six, six-line stanzas and a three-line envoy, originally without rhyme, in which each stanza repeats the end words of the lines of the first stanza, but in different order, the envoy using the six words again, three in the middle of the lines and three at the end.

It seems logical that in creating this seemingly complex work, the pair would eventually learn something of each other's thought processes and come to a better understanding of one another.

You can learn something from almost anyone if you take the time to listen, Lewis said.

"That they're opposites is why I think the teacher assigned these two students to work on this together," he said.

Catalano's work was chosen from among 75 entries this year.

Heller is currently conducting its national playwrighting contest for next season. The deadline for submissions is the end of January 2004.

"SESTINA"