By Jackie Demaline / Enquirer staff writer

There's a whole lotta Shakespeare goin' on in Cincinnati this season.

Joe Sofranko will play Mercutio in Clearstage's production of Romeo and Juliet. (The Enquirer/Brandi Stafford)

Six area companies are planning nine productions of eight plays. (Romeo & Juliet is especially popular, with productions by Clear Stage Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky University. It's also Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival's school touring show this year.)

It's easy to figure out why directors want to take on these comedies and tragedies - 400 years of the Bard of Avon remains a gift to the ages, and the subjects of his plays - war, teen angst, family strife - ring just as true for today's young audiences. This explains why he is the most-produced playwright on the planet.

But how much Shakespeare does an average Joe want to see?

By the numbers

197 Number of named Shakespearian characters you can see on area stages this season 34 Number of the above who are women 1,500 Words coined by Shakespeare. In Love's Labour's Lost listen for "zany," "enigma" and "critic." 22,784 Lines of verse in the eight plays area audiences can see this season. Troilus & Cressida contains the most lines 16 Primary characters who die on stage (Romeo and Juliet die twice, at Clear Stage and Northern Kentucky University) 29 Characters who fall in love

"Shakespeare is like every other kind of theater, but better!" says Joe Sofranko with a clear exclamation point.

OK, Sofranko, 18, isn't your average Joe. The Walnut Hills High School senior is the 2004 champ of the National Shakespeare Competition. In October he'll play scene-stealer Mercutio in Clear Stage Cincinnati's Romeo & Juliet and ring down the curtain on his high school stage in the title role of the Greatest Play in the English Language, Hamlet.

There are life lessons in Shakespeare, Sofranko adds. "It's a way for people to look at their own lives, it reflects on the human condition. As an actor, you get to experience the consequences of doing something without actually doing it - and you think, 'better not do that!' "

Misconceptions

It's time to crack some misconceptions wide open and give the Bard a try.

The biggest misconception is that Shakespeare is old and creaky.

His work is young and sexy. He was in his 20s when he started writing,.

"It's kind of the opposite of what people think it is," says Sofranko. "There's sex and violence - it's poetry, but Shakespeare was writing for the masses."

Joe Sofranko

Senior, Walnut Hills High School Claim to fame: 2004 winner of the National Shakespeare Competition Role: Mercutio, bad boy scene stealer in Romeo & Juliet, Clear Stage Cincinnati playing Oct. 21-30 at the Aronoff Center. In February he'll close his Walnut Hills acting career in The Biggest Role That Ever Was, Hamlet. Acting debut: Bit player in Charlotte's Web at CCM Prep Favorite singer: Ben Folds Favorite Shakespeare Play: Macbeth If I've learned one thing from Shakespeare it's: "Passion. All the characters have passion. I find a lot of passion in everything I do." Five-year plan: Graduate from Walnut Hills in May. Graduate from college in 2009 and five years from this moment be "working as a professional actor."

If you see a Shakespeare play, and it isn't working for you, don't blame it on the Bard, says Cincinnati Shakespeare artistic director Brian Isaac Phillips, who opens that theater's season Thursday with Love's Labour's Lost.

"There are some stories people may not like as well as others, but to not like Shakespeare means you had a bad teacher or saw a bad production. Maybe a director or someone in the cast was off."

Try again, Phillips urges. "Shakespeare done right is one of the most moving experiences you can have. It can be a gateway to the entire canon. Once you have it, you can't get enough."

"Contemporary" is this season's byword, in sensibility if not in setting.

It can't be otherwise, says Playhouse in the Park's Ed Stern, who directs Twelfth Night, also opening Thursday.

"The actors, designers and I have a contemporary sensibility, and the play is being filtered through that."

Shakespeare, particularly in his comedies, wrote about young people. The Twelfth Night cast is young and multicultural, including twins Viola and Sebastian, who are played by Asian-American actors.

The comedy's irreverent clown Feste "has contemporary angst," says Stern, "toward what is happening in the world of the play. The play is about issues of growing up, issues that remain similar 400 years after Shakespeare wrote the play."

Playhouse will take the youthful story to the young with an abridged production of Twelfth Night cast with interns. The play will be part of the National Endowment for the Arts' Shakespeare in American Communities project and tour in January and February. School visits will include morning workshops led by the cast.

This year, the NEA project is subtitled "Shakespeare for a New Generation."

Reaching new generation

At Northern Kentucky University, artistic director Sam Zachary says, "We hope all our productions speak to a new generation of showgoers.

Where Shakespeare's onstage in the region

• Twelfth Night, Tuesday through Oct. 8, Playhouse in the Park Marx Theatre, Eden Park. 7:30 p.m. Tuesday-Wednesday, 8 p.m. Thursday-Friday, 5 and 9 p.m. Saturday, 2 and 7 p.m. Sunday. Tickets: $34-$46. Tuesday and Wednesday previews $31. (513) 421-3888, or (800) 582-3208 or www.cincyplay.com. Extras: Free Meet the Artists are scheduled following shows on Sept. 15, Sept. 30 and matinees Sept. 12 and 26. Free pre-show Playhouse Perspectives lecture will feature costume designer Susan Tsu at 6 p.m. Sept. 19. • Love's Labour's Lost, Thursday through Oct. 3; Henry V, Jan. 6-30; Troilus and Cressida, Feb. 17-March 6; Much Ado About Nothing, March 24- April 17, Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival, 719 Race St., downtown. 7:30 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday. Tickets: $20, $18 seniors, $16 students. 381-2273 or www.cincyshakes.com. Extras: Talkback with the artists after every Sunday matinee; opening night post-performance party at Arnold's Bar & Grill, 210 E. Eighth St., downtown. • As You Like It, Oct. 15-30, Falcon Theatre, Monmouth Theater, 636 Monmouth St., Newport. 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Tickets: $15, $12 students and seniors. 481-9042 or www.falcontheater.net. • Romeo & Juliet, Oct. 21-30, Clear Stage Cincinnati, Jarson-Kaplan Theater, Aronoff Center for the Arts. 8 p.m. Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday. Tickets: $16, $14 seniors, $12 students. 621-2787 or www.cincinnatiarts.org. • Romeo & Juliet, Dec. 2-12, Fine Arts Center, Northern Kentucky University, Highland Heights. 8 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday.Tickets: $10, $8 seniors, $6 students. (859) 572-5464 • Macbeth, April 1-16, Ovation Theatre Company, Fifth Third Bank Theater, Aronoff Center for the Arts. 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday. Tickets: $16, $14 seniors, $12 students plus facility and service fees. 621-2787 or www.cincinnatiarts.org.

"We take it as an important educational mission to attract, inform and engage a new cultural group who have grown up with video games, high-tech movies and outrageously assaulting concerts.

"We're aware of how visually oriented people, and especially young people, are these days and how difficult it is for them to process language-dense plays and plays written in verse."

So director Mike King will set Romeo & Juliet (Dec. 2-12) in Suburbs, U.S.A. sometime between World War II and the Beatles, because that's when King feels teen consciousness exploded.

Picture dad in the living room in front of the blue glow of the black-and-white TV, and the kids rebelling through dress, music, language, behavior.

"The classic conflict in Romeo & Juliet is generational," Zachary says. "Parents and children exist in different worlds."

Gina Cerimele-Mechley echoes Stern when she uses the term "contemporary angst" for Clear Stage's Romeo & Juliet (Oct. 21-30).

She's casting "age-appropriate" actors for Romeo & Juliet, "teenagers playing teenagers." The play is set in modern-day Verona with an eye to current European taste in music and fashion.

Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival broke onto the area theater scene 10 years ago with a ka-pow by doing what nobody had done here - a company of twentysomethings played Shakespeare with an eye toward relevance and boundless energy. When they crashed, they bounded right back up.

A decade later, the Festival has grown up, and twentysomethings augment a primary company of thirtysomethings.

What hasn't changed, says artistic director Phillips, is, "everything we do, every show we select is picked because it has relevance to our contemporary lives."

Love's Labour's Lost is set in the late '60s, think Vietnam and protest with groovy duds and music. Later this season, Henry V (Jan. 6-30), which is about a nation at war, will be set in its original period. Troilus & Cressida (Feb. 17-March 6), about the politics of war, will be set in the here and now.

"In his time, Shakespeare was provocative, he was saying things that were loaded," says Norma Jenckes, University of Cincinnati professor and drama specialist. The best artists "find a way to reload those questions" for our time.

The genius, she says, is in its modernity and elasticity. What was essential to human nature still is. The fluid writing allows (but does not demand) new interpretations. "He gave artists the freedom of re-imagining. We must always ask, "what is the play now?"

E-mail jdemaline@enquirer.com