WHAT IS THE AMERICAN SHAKESPEARE FACTORY? DMTheatrics is pleased to announce the opening of the new wing of the DMT Laboratories. The American Shakespeare Factory is an exciting new venture from DMTheatrics, intended to explore and establish a new, 21st Century, American form of classical theater and Shakespearian storytelling, and to encourage and nurture new audiences and new artists for live theater. Created to take advantage of the overwhelmingly positive response to DMT's new Grudge Match series of Shakespearian adaptations and stagings, the ASF is proud to be bold, non-canonical, aggressive, and inventive in its approach to the Bard and to traditional theater forms.

WHY IS THE AMERICAN SHAKESPEARE FACTORY? The ASF exists to fill a void in American theater that has been either ignored or illserved by current companies and producers. While token efforts are occasionally made by larger theaters or longstanding production companies, they are often out-of-date, overwrought, or condescending, and even the most well-intentioned find themselves drowned in the onslaught of multimedia events, online outlets, and oversized trends that compete for the attention of casual audiences. The ASF is uniquely positioned to stand out in this oversaturated landscape, as DMT has successfully and repeatedly proven itself capable of attracting and sustaining new audiences and novice theatergoers, with its unconventional subject matter, rapid working pace, brash style, and pop cultural sensibilities. DMT also specialized in pop culture mashups long before the internet made it de riguer to respond to mass media with homebrew mixes and mashes, and has time and time again created new and exciting theater from the ashes of old and moribund forms, from the revival of burlesque to the works of Ed Wood, from cinematic detritus to dusty classical texts, everything is fair game for DMTheatrics, and nothing is sacred.

WHERE IS THE AMERICAN SHAKESPEARE FACTORY? Housed in a heretofore disused wing of the massive DMT complex somewhere in deepest, darkest Brooklyn, the DMT Army will fan out all over NYC, and eventually the globe, in search of audiences ready for new, exciting, unafraid classical theater, rebuilt and repurposed for modern audiences from the strands and fragments of the great works of one of the finest minds in the history of Western literature.

WHO IS THE AMERICAN SHAKESPEARE FACTORY? Not only the DMT Army, and not only its founder, the reclusive and possibly mentally unstable Frank Cwiklik, but, most importantly, William Shakespeare, whose extraordinary works and nimble vision have for too long been buried under suffocating layers of analysis, pretention, and hubris by layers of scholars and critics and theater insiders, and whose instincts for showmanship, sensation, and emotionalism have been held at bay by well-meaning but lifeless and overly reverential treatments. DMT and the American Shakespeare Factory contend that William Shakespeare was not the Pynchon or Pinter of his day, but rather, the Joss Whedon, the Quentin Tarantino, the Grant Morrison of his time, a consummate showman, creating a vital, vibrant, daringly alive and inventive theater, full of vigor, life, energy, and passion, theater meant for a living audience of real people, not a small circle of self-regarding specialists. While the language of Shakespeare has been praised and studied, and rightly so, we feel it is the strikingly modern and thrilling emotional pull and humanistic recognizability of the Bard's flawed characters and his remarkable pacing and structuring that created the theatrical forms that we know so well today. If Shakespeare were alive, he would be working in mass media, thrilling and transporting us with imagination and verve, rather than toiling over obscure verse for tiny niche markets. Shakespeare should be YouTube, pizza, and beer. Ideally, anyone from 7 to 70 should be able to come to an ASF show and not only understand every moment, but be moved, excited, and, most importantly, entertained.

WHAT IS AN AMERICAN SHAKESPEARE? That is what the ASF is here to discover and establish. Think of us as the American equivalent of the British invasion: just as the Beatles, the Stones, and a slew of other fresh and hungry musical acts stormed the shores of the USA in the early 60s, reigniting the slowly dying embers of rock and roll music, we hope to reignite the fires of Western culture by not only reminding it of its glories, but reframing it for the multimedia, multicultural, multicolored world of the 21st Century and beyond. Our goal is to freshen Shakespearian theater by refracting it through the lens of American spirit, candor, strength, humor, and brashness. It is our hope that showing and seeing these venerable works in a new and fearless manner will be our gift not only to future generations, but to the artists and craftsmen who have kept these extraordinary works alive through the centuries. The ASF is not an attempt to supplant or dismiss traditional theater, but to reinvigorate and pay tribute to its strengths while helping to wipe away the generations of dust and detritus that have obscured its triumphs and glories.

JOIN US. Our inaugural production, Adam Bertocci's THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF LEBOWSKI, played to sold out houses and standing ovations at the Kraine Theater. Planned for 2011 is our next production, Th' Tamin' of th' Shrew, and the 10th anniversary production of the S&M Shakespearean pastiche Bitch Macbeth. Also planned is a series of webisodes filming the entirety of the Shakespearian history plays in chronological order, and adaptations of the great works of Shakespeare for children. As an American company, we reserve the right to be bold and overambitious. Future announcements will be made in the coming months. To keep up with developments, join our mailing list, or email us your headshot and resume to become a member of the hundred-strong DMT Army.

--- DMTheatrics Laboratories, somewhere in Brooklyn