At age 34, Tim Vasen has just started his first 9-to-5 job.

The former free-lance director is the first person to hold the title of resident director at Center Stage. And along with the title come regular hours - a prospect he views with a mixture of enthusiasm and trepidation.

"Structure is both the thing that's exciting and the thing that's scary," says Vasen, posing for a photo while perched atop a steamer trunk that is one of the props in Center Stage's production of "Travels with My Aunt."

The play, adapted by Giles Havergal from Graham Greene's 1969 novel, begins previews Friday. It is one of three plays Vasen is directing at Center Stage this season. In January he will stage Heather McDonald's "An Almost Holy Picture," followed in March by the world premiere of Karen Hartman's "Gum."

The resident director job is still evolving. In addition to directing, Vasen will be working on long-term planning, as well as two of Center Stage's continuing programs - the Theater for a New Generation outreach project and the performance art series, Off Center.

Both programs tap into interests of Vasen's. A Los Angeles native who received his master's degree from the Yale School of Drama in 1993, he spent five years teaching acting and directing at Princeton University. Listed among his directing credits are off-Broadway, several productions at California's South Coast Repertory and one play in each of Center Stage's past three seasons ("Open Admissions," "The Glass Menagerie" and, most recently, "The Woman in Black").

Center Stage artistic director Irene Lewis had been looking for someone to fill the new post for several years. She says she chose Vasen because he has "a level of talent I was interested in, a level of intellect, sensitivity to people and ... a real interest in how an institution works."

Nor does it hurt, Lewis adds, referring to herself and others on the theater's artistic staff, that "he's more of a regular guy, not quite as kooky as we are ... more of a straight arrow."

"Tim is just a rock," says Jill Rachel Morris, curator of Off Center and the person who introduced him to Lewis. "He's very even-keeled emotionally ... He's one of the directors I've heard artists say, 'I would put my life in his hands,' and I think an institution could put its life in his hands."

Vasen is especially avid about Theater for a New Generation, which is aimed at theatergoers between the ages 14 and 30. This year, he points out, offers a particular challenge, since the program's five-year $1.4 million Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund grant has come to an end. "A lot of great things were started with that money, and the theater doesn't want to let them go," he says.

He also has an affinity for the avant-garde Off Center series. "I'm fresh enough from my grad school/young director days that

I find small-budget, intimate work very challenging," he says. Acknowledging that last season's Off Center festival was a financial disappointment, he expects this season's festival, which will probably be held in February, to be trimmed from two weeks to one and to showcase three or four performance artists.

At first glance, Vasen's previous Center Stage productions might seem to have little in common. All three, however, were modern plays, as are his three this season. "What I want to bring to the theater is more involvement with contemporary playwrights," he says.

In the case of "An Almost Holy Picture," a one-man show about a crisis of faith, Vasen will benefit from the proximity of playwright McDonald, who lives in Washington. "Gum," a play about female circumcision in an unspecified Arab culture, will be playwright Hartman's first full-scale production, and Vasen is eager to work with this young writer. "She has a really distinctive voice," he says.

Though he won't be working with playwright Havergal, who lives in Britain, the script of "Travels with My Aunt" fits Vasen's predilection for plays with a strong sense of theatricality.

One of the most theatrical elements in Havergal's adaptation is that four actors in business suits portray its two dozen characters - male, female and even canine. And, at one point or another, all four portray lead character Henry Pulling, a meek, retired bank clerk who becomes more and more caught up in his eccentric aunt's international adventures.

But while Henry's travels are just beginning, Vasen is staying put for the first time in years. He chose the uncertain life of theater back in grade school, when his grandmother gave the family a subscription to Los Angeles' Mark Taper Forum.

After performing in several school plays, Vasen enrolled in New York University to study acting, but changed his mind after freshman year, transferring to Yale, where he majored in English. "That's where I stumbled onto directing," he says, referring to the host of undergraduate productions staged every year in makeshift spaces ranging from libraries to squash courts. Vasen's initiation came when he directed David Rabe's "The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel" in a dining hall.

He spent a few years free-lancing in New York before returning to graduate school at Yale to work on large-scale productions. Some of those could be in his future at Center Stage, according to artistic director Lewis: "He's interested in huge plays - somebody who knows a great deal about literature."

In grad school, Vasen became friends with Center Stage's Morris, who was a classmate. "I remember thinking he was always the most intelligent person at the table, but his intelligence was a very alive, passionate thing," Morris recalls. "His interests are always in a larger sensibility about human nature, and he's not afraid to be uncomfortable if it's in the search of something that he feels is true and real."

For now, Vasen is getting accustomed to becoming a Baltimorean and a homeowner. Earlier this month, he and his wife, Leslie Brauman, moved from a one-room New York NTC apartment to a three-story Charles Village rowhouse. "Basically,

we have one piece of furniture in each room," he kids.

But he relishes settling down. "What will be great: On Oct. 1, after 'Travels' opens, and I don't have to go back to New York," he says. "I like the idea of being part of the cultural life of the city."

On stage

What: "Travels with My Aunt"

When: Beginning Friday, 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays, 7:30 p.m. most Sundays, matinees at 2 p.m. most Saturdays and Sundays and 1 p.m. Oct. 14. Through Oct. 25

Where: Center Stage, 700 N. Calvert St.

Tickets: $10-$40

Call: 410-332-0033