Clear Stage Cincinnati unfurled its 2004-2005 season with William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet.

Education Director, Regina Cerimele-Mechley, directed the production. Set in modern day Verona, the production utilized the talents of numerous local area high school and college students to cast the show as "age appropriate."

"I wanted to see this kind of production done for a long time," she said. "With some of Cincinnati's most talented young actors playing the young characters and older actors portraying the adults, the contemporary setting puts a modern face on this classic, and makes it easily accessible and more relevant to today's audiences."

Teenage angst, recklessness, limit-testing and limit breaking. These tendencies, possibly needs, of adolescence are timeless. The production used the juxtaposition of modern designer clothes, modern music and other scenic elements contrasted against the ancient stone and marble to communicate this transcendence of time.