It was as sudden and complete as a single sentence: 19-year-old Frances "Fran" Hall awoke one day last winter to the realization that she was - and presumably had been - a latent theater director.

At that moment, "I felt like I finally knew what I wanted to do, and that it would lead me somewhere," she said.

Though Fran is a writer, poet and all-around creative and literary type, she had never shown interest in the theater during high school.

"I thought it was kind of fruity," she said. "I didn't hang out with the thespian crowd."

But then - a year and a half later - her epiphany arrived.

It was leviathan sized and would not be refuted, rescinded or downsized. So there it was.

Growing up, "I've always been a bossy kid," she said with a wry grin. Fran is also a fierce and deep and pointblank type of girl. There would be no meek dramaturgical triflings. Contravening her Converse-clad youth and utter inexperience, Fran was far more interested in launching a cannonball than a straw wrapper. She set her ambitions on one of the most controversial works of 20th-century literature, Vladamir Nabokov's "Lolita," the twisted fictional memoir of protagonist Humbert Humbert and his sexual obsessions with a 12-year-old girl.

She chose Lolita because "I wanted to portray Lolita the way I saw her," she said, "and the only way to do that was to direct." (Lolita is actually "a lot more bratty in my version," she said.)

According to Fran's mother, Victoria Hall, Fran announced her directorial intentions as simply and matter-of-factly as she herself had experienced them. She came downstairs one morning, told her mother, and that was that.

Fran "has always been a weird kid," said Victoria Hall proudly. "When I tell my friends that my daughter sud-denly decided to be a director, they say, 'You know, that makes perfect sense.' ... Directing is so natural for her. She's got the right sense of humor and a bit of a sixth sense for things." She also "would never do anything middle of the road."

Indeed, she wouldn't. With more mad dash than slapdash, in a week Fran set the wheels in motion. She booked Andrews Hall for two nights, May 25 and 26, with her very first credit card. She put out a casting call in the local newspaper. She solicited local musician Sasha Papadin to compose an original musical score. She filed a fictitious business statement for her own theater company, Intertwined Productions.

To Fran, the word "intertwined" connotes the image of "vines curling in and out of each other and wrapping around a central object. This is what I want my audience to feel. I want them to feel like they are part of whatever I'm doing ... I want them to be intertwined."

Fran adapted her script directly from Nabokov's book, using the timeline of Stanley Kubrick's film but removing all his dialogue. After all, one of the pivotal reasons she loves Lolita so much is Nabokov's stunning and inimitable prose.

In the end, her interpretation of Lolita bloomed into its own - with complexity and depravity and absurd humor - the petals of Nabokov's words lacing the dark with a despairing, delicate luster. Shading her script with the symbolism of shape-shifters, personal demons and a surreal seraph (Fran's little brother, augmented by angel wings), Fran applies a veil of haunted imagery to depict a man sickened by obsession and a girl lost.

To Fran, the true disturbing grist of "Lolita" goes beyond the specific sickness of pedophilia to encompass the vast disease of obsession - and what happens when "obsession gets the best of you." While Humbert Humbert may be condemned to the most base stratum of monster, "he is still so human ... you almost feel sorry for him," she said - and it is in this identification that she wants her audience to "walk that line" between pity and revulsion.

Although "art is a release for me, I'm not a depressed person. I don't think of these (grave) matters in everyday life," she said.

When Hall held her casting call, only a handful of people showed up, but they turned out to be the right people, and so - in the blink of a green room light - they were rehearsing every week at cast members' houses with Fran, admittedly, learning as she went.

"I don't know what a director does," said Fran. "But apparently this is it."

Jim Geagan, the 58-year-old lawyer who plays Humbert, simply responded to an ad in the paper for "actors of all ages." He had no idea he would be auditioning for the play "Lolita."

Then later, "I did not imagine myself as Humbert," he said. "I imagined myself as someone else, presumably not Lolita."

Not having acted since college, he thought at best he might be "the guy who would go out with one line, like 'Where's the meatloaf?'" Fran had other ideas in store for him. When presented with the role, Geagan had some concerns.

"Cold spiders of panic ran down my spine," he jokes.

In the end, he chose to support Fran. Lots of 19-year-olds have grandiose plans of directing their own play, "but to go out and adapt the novel and rent the hall and then do it ... I am so impressed that she did ... I just hope people show up."

Though there's nothing overt or graphic in the play, Geagan knows there might be some "open mouths." The controversy is "part of the insanity" of this one-of-a-kind ambitious test tube experiment of Frances Hall's "Lolita."

Despite any raised eyebrows, Fran's friends and family have been unconditionally supportive. On a recent afternoon - their first time rehearsing at Andrews Hall, in fact - Fran's mother orbits carefully around her daughter. Does she want anything to eat? Should the actors speak louder? Do her son's wings need adjusting?

Is Fran's mother worried about the contentious subject matter and how the community might misconstrue her daughter's artistic aims? Like any parent, she's protective. She's also surprised that the classic - albeit controversial - novel would prevent Fran from using the high school's theater for practice.

Today's oversexed pop culture can be shocking, lewd and far more graphic than the sexual references in the play her daughter is directing. "Open a magazine, listen to the radio," Victoria Hall said.

If the controversy surrounding Fran's "Lolita" persists through opening night, well, at least there's "something exciting" going on in local theater, Victoria Hall said with a laugh.

All the while Fran sits with anxious determination in her director's chair, singular upon a great, hollow sea of polished hardwood floor. Lights, blocking, elocution, expression. A thousand components to stitch together, whose nuances change a thousand others.

She cites a quote from one of her favorite books, Rebecca Wells' "Little Altars Everywhere," which to her feels like a mantra.

"The whole process, (of directing) from first read-through to opening night, feels like a series of tiny miracles to me - one person's thoughts getting transformed into flesh and movement and conversation and thousands of gestures," she said.

When something goes right, "When I see a scene go the way I imagine it, it (lights) a spark in my chest.

(The play) is my baby, I think," said Fran.

And then it happens - a spark across the bare stage.

"I have never seen such smooth, amiable roads as those that now radiated before us, across the crazy quilt of 48 states," said Geagan, at last projecting his voice enough to subsume the echoes of the theater.

"Voraciously we consumed those long highways, in rapt silence we glided over their glossy black dance floors."

The sad, terrible way Humbert lifts his gaze, a little forlornly, as Lolita looks away.

May Fran's miracles keep coming - in spite of all those raised eyebrows.

"Lolita" is a tale of forbidden love, murder and addiction. It is produced by Hall's own theater company, Intertwined Productions.

Both Friday, May 25, and Saturday, May 26, performances begin at 7 p.m. at Andrews Hall in the Sonoma Community Center, located at 276 E. Napa St. Tickets are $10 general admission and $8 for students. They can be purchased at Pharmaca, Readers' Books, the Cheese Makers Daughter and at the door. They can also be purchased outside of Sonoma Market by Jeff Stuhr.