Cole Porter wrote about 25 musicals for stage and screen in his lifetime, but only “Kiss Me, Kate” and “Anything Goes” are produced with any regularity in the 21st Century.

“Some of the subject matters just aren’t relevant anymore,” said Adam Day Howard, who will direct “Kiss Me, Kate” for a four-performance run at Youngstown State University’s Ford Theater.

What makes “Kiss Me, Kate” the exception. According to Howard, it’s the source material.

“Like all great golden age musicals, it’s a musical about another musical. The plot of ‘Kiss Me, Kate’ is, here’s a theater company doing a brand new musical based on (Shakespeare’s) ‘Taming of the Shrew,'” Howard said. “It’s still relevant in the same way ‘Taming of the Shrew’ is. Sometimes people get married for the wrong reasons. Sometimes people use positivity and motivation to overcome interpersonal problems. One of the best things about ‘Taming of the Shrew’ is the character of Kate is so powerful and she’s not angry for anger’s sake. She rejects the patriarchy. She rejects those things … It’s a really, really accessible, really timeless script.”

Howard’s primary focus as a lecturer at YSU has been musical theater, but his love of Shakespeare equally is strong. He worked with a program funded by the National Endowment for the Arts teaching Shakespeare to high school students in South Carolina. Those students were taught Shakespeare from the actors’ perspective, embracing the rhythms of the language that are so important to appreciating the Bard’s work. He took the same approach with his cast.

“Shakespeare was a genius,” Howard said. “He wrote for actors that were untrained, so he put all the emphasis in all the right places. And my students during ‘Kiss Me, Kate,’ working the original text of ‘Taming of the Shrew,’ once they stopped fighting the rhythm of Shakespeare and once they started embracing the bounce and the iambic pentameter, they all kind of realized instantaneously, ‘Holy crap, this works so much better if you embrace the rhythm.’ There are, of course, exceptions to that rule, but Shakespeare is crass, broad, loud and funny, and as soon as you can see people realize that, and they stop thinking of it as fancy, then all the possibilities of acting open up.”

The cast features Ben Podnar, Maria Anastasiades, Robert Channel, Natalie Horvath, Alex Shina, Nate Perry, Vixen Atwood, Liam Burk, Owen Mills, Jessica Sprague, Romerio Dawkins, Cadence Watson, Grace Burk, Noah Dudai and Eric Ballard.

While not as old as Shakespeare, “Kiss Me, Kate” belongs to a different era, making its Broadway debut in 1948 and becoming the first show ever to win a Tony Award for best musical. The music of the jazz age may be just as obscure as iambic pentameter to the average college student., and Howard relied on one of his regular directing techniques to educate the cast on that style.

“With every single show that I do, whether I music directed or directed or both, I make a dramaturgical playlist that helps everyone understand the musical styles involved,” he said. “And it’s one of my sort of director’s requirements. You have to listen to this playlist, and you have to listen to it a lot.

“With this playlist, I tried to split the difference between the Italian influence and the jazz influence, and where those things overlap. They overlap with Dean Martin. They overlap with Henry Mancini and Louis Prima, these things that are Italian but jazzy at the same time. I also put on some (Luciano) Pavarotti … It’s really, really important that these 20-year-old students who have never listened to classical music or jazz in their lives immerse themselves in it for a few months to understand the vocal styles.”

Those performers will be accompanied by a live orchestra led by Michael Butler, who is director of bands at YSU’s Dana School of Music.

“He has been rehearsing a mostly all-student orchestra all semester, and we actually had our first orchestra cast meet up rehearsal (last week),” Howard said. “It went extremely well. We have a few local professionals hired as well, and it’s always good for students to play with professionals.

“Our lighting designer, Jonathan Jon Zelezniak, is an alumni. He comes from Pittsburgh, and he’s just a phenomenal lighting designer. Todd Dicken’s set is fantastic. Catherine Garlick’s costumes are, as always, fantastic. Everything really came together for this musical, which has a lot of challenges for new and growing actors.”

Instead of running for two weekends, “Kiss Me, Kate” will be staged for four performances this week.

“There’s something special about having the house fully full, instead of mostly full,” Howard said. “And we found that with one weekend for a show like this, we get a packed house every night, and that’s just a great experience for everyone.”

WHAT: “Kiss Me, Kate”

WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday

WHERE: Ford Theater, Bliss Hall, Youngstown State University

HOW MUCH: Tickets are $18.50 for adults, $14.50 for senior citizens and non YSU students, $10.50 for YSU faculty and staff, $6.50 for children ages 18 and younger and free for YSU students. Tickets are available online at www.ysu.tix.com and by calling 330-941-3105.