As She Likes It : Stage: A San Diego teen-ager finds herself not only holding her own at the Old Globe with some of the best names in theater, but becoming a bona fide showstopper as well.

The cast for the Old Globe’s “As You Like It” lists impressive experience in Broadway, film and television. But a young upstart just out of high school is starting to make audiences take notice.

Mickey Hanley, a perky blond teen-ager with a winning combination of athletic ability and acting prowess, had only one professional assignment on her resume when she was tagged to play the roles of Woodland Nymph and Hymen.

Now, she romps with the best of them in the lavish staging of Shakespeare’s classic, currently at the Lowell Davies Festival Stage. But the 18-year-old actress acknowledges that she is still awed by the company she keeps.

“I’m so honored just to share the stage with people like Richard Kneeland and Richard Easton,” Hanley said in an interview before curtain time last week. “I learned so much watching them.”

The promising novice from San Diego’s O’Farrell School of Creative and Performing Arts takes center stage for several

fleeting solos during the course of the play, maneuvering through the sylvan setting with the fluid grace of a true forest sprite. In fact, at one point, her buoyant dancing--laced with tricky gymnastic feats--is a bona fide showstopper.

An experience like that would persuade most young hopefuls that the world is theirs. But the savvy young lady who soars and tumbles like sagebrush on the Old Globe’s outdoor stage, is too grounded in reality to bank on stardom.

“I’m no idle dreamer,” Hanley said as she prepared for her performance. “This was a big break, but I have no illusions about the future. I want to do theater. I’m obsessed with Shakespeare. But I’m not Equity yet, and I won’t join (the professional acting association) until I’m 21.

“I’m going to junior college and majoring in journalism. If I don’t make it as an actress,” she said, “I want to be a critic. I want to be able to express my opinion.”

Hanley has already begun that process. She wrote and directed a show at O’Farrell. And she is hard at work on her second script, “My Best Friend Flew Away Today,” which its author describes as “seriocomic.”

Hanley is also already a recognized poet.

“I just found out that I’m up for a Golden Poet award from a national poetry society,” she said, referring to the group World of Poetry. “I’m going to Las Vegas on Aug. 27 to read my poetry in the competition. Joan Rivers, Red Buttons and Bob Hope will be there as hosts.”

Old Globe-goers will hear Hanley recite a few of the Bard’s rhyming couplets when her otherworldly character, Hymen, “brings everything together” for the happy ending in “As You Like It.”

Hanley holds her own very well--even among the critically acclaimed professionals--when she delivers those immortal lines. However, her flights of fancy as the Puckish Woodland Nymph stand out as Hanley’s calling card in this lively production.

“Normally, there wouldn’t be a dance routine in the play,” Hanley acknowledged. “But the director (Julianne Boyd) had an idea to make the character not only wrapping things up later on, but to symbolically bring on the seasons. That shows that my character has special powers. She’s like a goddess or a fairy--innocent, but not naive.”

Hanley ushers in the fall season with a wispy modern dance segment, strewing leaves as she glides across the stage. Later, she unleashes a gentle torrent of snow for the winter scene.

To celebrate spring’s rebirth, Hanley commands attention with a series of gymnastic moves that include handsprings, weightless aerial high jinks, cartwheels, and round-offs (cartwheels using both legs).

“In the spring (segment), I get to show off,” she said. “Bonnie Johnston (choreographer) said, ‘Let’s see what you’re capable of,’ so I did a lot of my routines. When she saw my acrobatics, she included it in the dancing.”

Hanley, who began studying gymnastics at age 6, makes some unusual entrances in her nymph-like guise.

“I have to come down a rope and a pole,” she noted. “The first time I went down the pole, it was fun--and it’s still fun. But the rope scares me. It doesn’t look stable, even though it is, and I hurt myself coming down. Now I wear gloves to protect my hands. But it’s a fun role to do.”

But these setbacks are minor compared to an earlier injury in the play.

“Just before we opened, I got hurt just on a single jump,” Hanley recalled. “I landed on the trap door and sprained an ankle. I had to miss the first previews.”

The director’s original plan was to expand the woodland creature’s role even further, but that had to be scrapped.

“Julianne had me in the love scene too, but it turned out to be too distracting, so she took it out.”

As it stands, Hanley’s role is just a cameo, but, for the fledgling actress, it’s a thrilling beginning.

“It feels great,” she said. “I just want to do everything. I want to play a 20-year-old when I’m 60, and a 60-year-old when I’m 20. This is what I want to do.”