Performances play Sept. 5-Oct. 3, opening Studio Arena's 40th season.

The comedy concerns "a plucky young novice who puts her future as a nun in jeopardy when she teaches her personal unorthodox views of God and religion," according to the season announcement. "Add to the mix a traditional Mother Superior, a childhood sweetheart, and a mysterious janitor bearing messages from a 'high authority'..."

Dudzick is author of Over the Tavern, King o' the Moon and Lake Effect, which chronicled the Catholic Polish-American family, the Pazinskis. Plays from the trilogy (particularly Over the Tavern) blossomed in regional theatres in recent years.

Pamela Hunt will direct. The five-character play is set in a small town in upstate New York at a very old Catholic school where nuns still teach, and live in an adjacent convent.

The setting is a third-grade classroom, though no children are in the play — unlike Over the Tavern in which a young Rudy Pazinski challenged a old-fashioned nun. Playwright Dudzick told Playbill On-Line the new two-act play is a "clash of wills and beliefs" between a novice and an aging nun. An old beau of the novice complicates matters.

The play will have a New York City workshop this summer prior to the full staging.

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The 2004-05 season also includes Douglas Post's mystery, Murder in Green Meadows; Herb Gardner's A Thousand Clowns; Regina Taylor's gospel-infused Crowns; Mitch Albom and Jeffrey Hatcher's Tuesdays With Morrie; Ronald Harwood's comedy, Quartet, about former opera singers in a retirement home; and Richard Dresser's play about Little League dads, Rounding Third.

For information, call (716) 856-5650 or (800) 77-STAGE or visit www.studioarena.org.