OFF HOURS: Lynne Collinson -- executive assistant, actress

When Lynne Collinson isn't busy at her day job as executive assistant to the executive dean of the medical school, local theater consumes her time. She says the only thing she talks about more than theater is her kids.

Indeed, the world of theater is such a part of Collinson that references to actors, theaters, titles of plays and their key characters are part of her everyday conversation.

Theater and Brown have been common threads throughout Collinson's adult life. "I guess it's fate," she says. Her first job at Brown was acting for medical students. She would portray a woman with dementia, for instance, and the students would have to arrive at a diagnosis based on the scene they saw and heard. "Theater can be used for many things," Collinson noted, including helping medical students view the aging process in a more personal way.

Collinson (left) succumbed to the acting bug when she was a high school student participating in Project Discovery at Trinity Rep. The government program subsidized tickets for students so that they could attend plays, and offered free acting classes.

Nowadays, she tries to act in one major production a year - a six- to eight-week commitment that almost becomes a full-time job in itself. When she is not working on a project, Collinson spends time doing administrative work for The Players at Barker Playhouse. When she is not recruiting actors, she is on a committee to choose directors for the various projects.

And when she's not choosing directors, Collinson apparently can hold her own in the director's chair. Recently, she took her first stab at directing when the original director for "Picasso at the Lapin Agile" backed out. Collinson found the effort to be more exciting than acting - and more of a commitment, taking up about five nights a week. But of all the theatrical projects she's been involved with, Collinson says she's proudest of this one.

Although she has acted in plays for some 30 years, Collinson enrolled in her first formal acting class two years ago. Most recently, she played a 72-year-old woman in "Finding Life," one of three plays in the Women's Playwriting Festival performed last May by Perishable Theater.

Collinson hopes to continue studying acting and pushing herself to grow as an actor and a director. "There's always something new to learn," she says. - Christine deCesare