Elena Passarello is two people, both much cited in Pittsburgh as harbingers of hope or despair: She's that talented young person who moves here from elsewhere, and she's that same sought-after young professional who is moving away.

Alyssa Cwanger, Post-Gazette Elena Passarello plays Louise in the City Theatre production of "The Underpants." It will be her last role in Pittsburgh, where the native Southerner has lived for the past nine years, before moving on to the University of Iowa to pursue a master's degree. Click photo for larger image. 'The Underpants' Where: City Theatre, South Side. When: Through June 12. Previews Thurs.-Fri. 8 p.m.; Sat. 5:30 p.m.; Sun. and Tues. 7 p.m. Opens Wed. with performances thereafter Tues. 7 p.m., Wed.-Fri. 8 p.m.; Sat. 5:30 and 9 p.m.; Sun. 2 p.m. Tickets: $15-$40; 412-431-CITY. Related coverage Commentary: Steve Martin is just as funny behind the pen

Will she return? Who knows? Talent flows according to obscure laws of gravity, viscosity and demand.

With a cute face framed by black hair and that vivid presence and vivacity called irrepressible, the 27-year-old is variously a writer, musician, comic, teacher and, especially, actor. Starting this week, Pittsburgh gets its last chance for the foreseeable future to enjoy her acting, as she plays the young wife at the center of the comic whirlwind in City Theatre's production of the Steve Martin-Carl Sternheim farce "The Underpants."

In August, Passarello leaves town, not out of dissatisfaction with creative opportunity here, but to try herself in a different arena. "I need to get out of Pittsburgh," she says, "to pare down my distractions and focus on one thing. I arrived without skills -- all my skills I developed here -- but they've been tested only in this market."

Theater-goers who've seen her spirited, varied performances for City, Public Theater, Unseam'd Shakespeare, Bricolage and the University of Pittsburgh, among others, would reasonably expect her future focus to be acting. Instead, she's decided to pursue a master's degree in nonfiction writing at the University of Iowa. ("Very friendly," she calls it; "maybe too Caucasian, but clean and nice.")

Her choice isn't a complete surprise. Anyone who notices bylines should have noticed hers, mainly in Pittsburgh Magazine, City Paper, Whirl or the former In Pittsburgh. "It seems more sensible to get a degree in writing than theater," she says.

Anyone who also notices accents might have guessed that she comes from the South. In her first few years here, she says, her accent would come back especially when she had to entreat someone: "It's a defense mechanism. My femininity must be really Southern."

Perhaps it was simply fated that Passarello would leave Pittsburgh this year. Born in Charleston, S.C., she moved to Georgia when she was 9, then to Pittsburgh when she was 18. So moving now keeps her record consistent at nine years in each place.

She wrote and experienced theater early. There were the usual childhood "dumb diaries, stories and poetry contests." And there was the Dock Street Theatre in Charleston.

Then came the move to Snellville, Ga., a small town a half-hour outside Atlanta, "where Larry Flynt was shot in our courthouse." It's also the hometown of "American Idol" runner-up Diana DeGarmo. Passarello calls it not a suburb but a "tri-burb," a place beyond the suburbs but not rural, especially now, when the one grocery store has given way to a strip mall.

Living there from 9 to 18 "seemed like forever." She played classical guitar until her hands got big enough for the upright bass, her favorite instrument. "Because it was the biggest -- I went for the flash factor. And a lot of boys were playing it." There's also a musical reason, having to do with its "really mellow, rich tone. You can embellish each note."

Her high school staged musicals, of course, "where everyone gets a part and Mom and Dad build the set." So for "Guys and Dolls" and "L'il Abner" ("every school in Georgia did 'L'il Abner' "), Passarello played the bass. But she also acted. In "West Side Story," "due to a small acting pool," she played Maria, even though she was a foot taller than Tony. She played Bianca in "Taming of the Shrew" and Abigail in "The Crucible."

This took a lot of juggling, because she was allowed only one elective, and she played in the orchestra and wrote for the school paper. Then at 16, she went to Governor's School -- "the first time I learned theater had a method that you could practice."

Her parents were divorced when she was young, so she grew up with two families. When it came time for college, her mother wanted her to go to Furman, which she calls a "country club school." But she had won a high school English award, and Pitt sent recruiting letters. She wanted to go somewhere outside Georgia, and her father had moved to Philadelphia, so she came to look at Pitt. That was on March 30, "and I was the only one with a winter coat on," but she liked it.

So she enrolled in September 1996. It was "really scary in the beginning -- it's very different here, sort of the anti-Atlanta," with Pittsburgh's many boundaries of hills and rivers, whereas Atlanta spreads out forever.

At Pitt, she did a double major in nonfiction writing and in literature, where she studied mainly pre-1950 American lit, and she added most of a French major. She had an undergrad research fellowship on the literature of the American South. And in writing, she did her thesis manuscript on popular music lyrics for Lee Gutkind, who published her in his national magazine, Creative Nonfiction Journal -- a considerable honor.

She took only one course in theater, but she made her mark on stage at Pitt in Paula Vogel's strangely convoluted comedy, "And Baby Makes Seven," an electric 1999 debut with Beth Hersey and Justin Krauss, directed by C.T. Steele.

That attracted a lot of attention and "put me in the audition pool outside Pitt." That's what kept her in Pittsburgh after graduation in 2000. She stayed that first summer to act in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" for Quantum and "Ferris Wheel" Pitt, then went on to manage the Pitt box office.

But mainly, she worked for Lisa Hoitsma and Carol Wolfe at Gateway to the Arts, starting off answering the phones and staying to teach. "It's been a bread and butter career for me -- I teach all the time." She has also performed for Gateway and written study guides, taught playwriting via residencies arranged by City Theatre and, for Quantum, done theater residencies at several high schools.

She asks rhetorically, "How much better is that than slinging coffee?" Oddly, in spite of seeming like perfect casting for a perky, gum-chewing diner waitress, she's never done that -- except as an actor, in a just-completed indie film by Jim Daniels, "Dumpster," with Jeffrey Carpenter and David Conrad.

Along the way, there has also been lots of writing, but her music has been confined to her two-"guy" comedy act with Sheila McKenna, "The Muthers Bruthers," where she wears a mustache and plays her bass.

Her boyfriend, playwright David Turkel ("Wild Signs" and "Holler" for Bricolage), is moving to Iowa with her, "looking forward to going through grad school vicariously. And I told him he can get a dog." They can't have one where they live now on the North Side, making do instead with their three-legged cat.

As to the acting that has kept her so busy, "my education has come from stealing from the incredible actors of Pittsburgh. Everyone who comes into town talks about all the talent here."

She has choice Pittsburgh collaborators in "The Underpants," for which Tracy Brigden directs a cast that includes Martin Giles, Sheila McKenna, Joe Schulz, Darren Eliker and Tim Hartman. And it's fun to work with a Steve Martin script -- like Passarello, another funny actor who's a writer and also plays a stringed instrument.

"I was a child of 'Nick at Night' reruns," she says, so she met Martin through old "Saturday Night Live" skits. She knew his "Roxanne" before she'd heard of "Cyrano de Bergerac." Now she reads the New Yorker and appreciates his essays there: "It sounds like his coked up comic niche in the '70s gave him the resources to do what he wanted later."

Martin's script for "Underpants" is all about timing, she says. It's 150 pages long, and in rehearsal the cast is getting through it in a breakneck 80 minutes. It seems as if Passarello has breezed through Pittsburgh just as fast.