Matthew Gasda
Story Stream
Sleeping Through Life May 13, 2025
Two chapters into Matthew Gasda’s The Sleepers, Mariko, a waitress and stage actress, gets into a spat with her boyfriend, Dan, a Marxist English professor and would-be public intellectual. As she chides him for failing “to see things from my perspec...
The Sleepers by Matthew Gasda May 12, 2025
A Contemporary Tragedy in a Classic StyleFour New Yorkers' paths collide in the days ahead of the 2016 election. Dan teaches Marxism while secretly courting a student. His girlfriend Mariko, an actress, finds refuge in her dying mentor's bed. When he...
The Millennial Darkness of Matthew Gasda May 09, 2025
Few contemporary American authors are as in touch with today’s zeitgeist as Matthew Gasda. His break-out play Dimes Square premiered in 2022 and was hailed as both “decadent” and “delicious.” The play provides a generational snapshot of millennials a...
The Sleepers May 08, 2025
Akari was on the couch, scrolling Instagram.Her body was small, but she was very toned and lean from yoga and pilates classes, so she appeared longer than she was. And though her eyes were cast down, she was aware that Dan was staring at her, studyin...
Author Spotlight: Matthew Gasda, ‘The Sleepers’ May 08, 2025
Akari has arrived at a particularly tough moment in Mariko and Dan’s relationship. The cinematographer has just arrived at her sister’s place in New York to crash on their couch after a particularly long conversation in the middle of the night about ...
Trapped in an Age of Reflection May 07, 2025
According to Soren Kierkegaard, there are ages of reflection and ages of passion. Imagine, he says, that someone throws a gold doubloon onto the middle of a frozen pond. It is unclear how thick the ice is and whether it is safe to walk on. In an age ...
On Matthew Gasda's 'Sleepers' May 06, 2025
Gasda’s first novel since his printing-on-the-basement-letterpress-with-his-sister days begins:Akari decided to walk north along Bedford Avenue instead of switching tothe G train. The fresh air felt good, and it was a beautiful day, so why not?That “...
Review: “The Sleepers” by Matthew Gasda May 06, 2025
On the one hand: haven't we had enough?Do we really need to hear about the empty lives and unsatisfying relationships of the Brooklyn cold-brew class ever again?8/10ths of all books produced by and for this class, forever beamed out to the hinterland...
How Algorithms Killed Romance May 01, 2025
Arranged marriages long ago disappeared from the secular West. Yet marriage and dating are becoming functions of caste once more. This time, it’s dating apps that determine caste, with status signals subtly baked into almost every social-media platfo...
Matt Gasda and Harry Hill Talk 'Zoomers' November 10, 2023
No contemporary, local playwright makes you squirm in your seat like Matt Gasda. The latest of his hyper-specific living room plays, Zoomers, is about just that, specifically Bushwick zoomers, a subculture so easy to target they should be wary of rog...
A Tale of Two Knausgaards October 27, 2023
Karl Ove Knausgaard, both progenitor and zenith of so-called autofiction, is one of the most important writers of the last 15 years. With hindsight, we can see that Knausgaard does a few things very well. He's excellent on the quotidian (making meals...
Generational Conflict October 27, 2023
If the members of Generation Z (this reviewer included) were bearable for more than ninety minutes at a time, then Matthew Gasda’s new play Zoomers would be a knockout. But because so-called Zoomers tend to wear out their welcome before too long, the...
Downtown Demons October 12, 2023
Pandemic-era Manhattan was interesting. Social networks formed around a shared skepticism toward institutions and a fear that we were no longer living in an open society. Repressive Covid governance, following years of Trump-era moral panics, produce...
Between Rationality and Passion September 19, 2023
Arguably, from his first book Dusklands, to his new and definitively “late” novella The Pole, J.M. Coetzee has followed a simple aesthetic and formal imperative: from simple inputs complexity arises. Reading him from one end of his canon to another—p...
What Is Theater's Place In The Digital World? September 15, 2023
Matthew Gasda can teach creatives of any ilk an important lesson: to be successful as an artist, you’ve got to produce your work. The Brooklyn-based playwright has no illusions about the art form in which he labors, stating, “Mainstream theatre [has ...
The Timely Provocations of Matthew Gasda September 14, 2023
“Novalis” was the nom de plume of the polymath Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg, an 18th-century German Romantic poet, novelist, and philosopher. Novalis is also the name of the Substack under which Matthew Gasda publishes daily entrie...
Saturn Devouring His Son August 23, 2023
The devouring father is one of the most terrifying figures handed down to us from the dark depths of the antique psyche. The Titan Cronos eating his children is the Greek ur-text, of course, but there are parallels in other mythologies. In Persian my...
Escape From Irony July 17, 2023
Matthew Gasda, in whose play Quartet this exchange appears, is one of those contemporary writers who, despite having no theological agenda whatsoever, find themselves unable to avoid the topic of God. Mostly, as in that exchange, God is present by hi...
Tainted Love: On Matthew Gasda's 'Dover' February 13, 2023
Is the tragic hero even possible in 2023? Not really. But Matthew Gasda’s latest at-home play, Dover, does confront us with the moral quandaries that come with drama, conflict, and power games, writes Geoffrey Mak in his review....
