An Interview with Playwright Matthew Gasda
The New York City-based playwright talks to Hillary Sproul about creating the cultural commentaries he's become known for, like the underground hit Dimes Square, and what we can expect to see from him next.
Matthew Gasda’s latest play, Doomers, is a fictionalized reimagining of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s removal and subsequent reinstatement in 2023. Delving into a trending topic like AI seems unsurprising for the playwright behind Dimes Square—both works reflect the culture of the moment, freezing in amber the happenings of today.
While the “dramatist of Dimes Square” first gained attention for his depiction of a quite specific downtown scene, Gasda’s work hasn’t always been rooted in cultural commentary. Through the Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research—a theatre company Gasda co-founded—he develops and produces works he sees as “humanistic dramas” while simultaneously giving burgeoning playwrights their own platform. The productions at BCTR feel intimate—even DIY—and have fostered an energized community of creative collaborators.
With film screenings, acting workshops, writing classes and regular performances, Gasda and BCTR lie firmly at the center of an inspired downtown theatre scene. We sat down to learn more about his path to creating the cultural commentaries he’s become known for—and, perhaps more importantly, what we can expect to see from him next.
Hillary Sproul: Can you tell me a bit about where you’re from and how you found your way to NYC?
Matthew Gasda: I’m from Bethlehem, PA—a colonial town founded by Moravians, which became a major steel producer in the 20th century. Bethlehem is about 65 miles from NYC, just across the Delaware River. I found my way to New York City because I didn’t have any other plan. I’m competitive and NYC seemed like a place where you could make your own legend; anything else felt like cheating.
HS: What came first for you, writing or theater? Or was your work as a writer always focused on writing for the theater?
MG: Writing—I was completely desk-bound, literary; I didn’t have any notion of theater, making theater, producing it… I rarely even went to see plays. But once I started writing plays and other people wanted to start directing or acting in them, I quickly realized I had intuitions and opinions about them. And because I had played in bands in high school and college, I had an idea about collaboration, leading projects, putting on shows; while I didn’t have theater experience, I had “making stuff” experience, and that translated relatively well. But on a more fundamental level, taking control of the material side of my theater career meant that my plays would be produced consistently since I naturally cared about them the most.
HS: After what point did it become clear to you that you would continue down this path?
MG: Hard to tell, but very quickly. While I hardly became instantly famous or anything like that, I got a stronger response from the people I gave my early plays to than anything else I’d ever written or conceived of. There was a signal—there were enough people who knew what they were talking about, saying “there’s something here”, that I had incentive to continue. This was around 2015.
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HS: I first heard of your work through the play Dimes Square, but I know you wrote and directed several plays before that. Did you feel that Dimes Square was a natural progression of the work you had done up until that point?
MG: One hundred percent a continuation; Dimes was written in 2021, after about 6 years of tinkering, writing, producing, having successes and failures. And yes, on a deeper level, Dimes demonstrated what I had been working on prior: shows about people in living spaces, talking, acting in more or less identifiably naturalistic ways without much plot but with lots of psychology and subtle social tensions.
HS: Both Dimes Square and Doomers seem to serve as mini time capsules. Have you always been interested in essentially fictionalizing these moments in history and culture?
MG: I didn’t always write Zeitgeist plays—at all. In fact, the opposite: tightly sealed hermetic family and relationship dramas. But there’s been a kind of cycle whereby, after Dimes, I’ve gotten more invested and pulled into contemporary culture and have realized that I enjoy taking what are essentially memes and realizing them as fully humanistic dramas.
HS: AI is extremely culturally relevant today, but what was it that first piqued your interest in dramatizing this topic? AI itself or the specific case of Sam Altman?
MG: I think more of Altman himself since I’m interested in characters above all. Sam is a deeply Shakespearean, Renaissance figure to me—or at least that’s my best guess about him, since I’ve never met him. I don’t think I could write a play about a contemporary event if it was grounded in slightly cracked, outrageous, Herculean characters.
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HS: Can you tell me a bit about the Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research? I’d love to know what the term “theatre research” means to you.
MG: BCTR is essentially a building in Greenpoint and a network of actors, backed by my repertoire of plays (though not exclusively, as we do other work). Research means something is never completely complete, never totally polished or fixed; it means looking at the bare essentials of theater (gesture, tone, psychological strategy, emotion) rather than the professional mechanics of industrial Broadway theater.
HS: I saw that you teach a scene study class. I assume this is from a director’s perspective, but I’d love to know a bit about your relationship with acting. Is there a specific type of acting method you subscribe to as a teacher, and was there ever a point in which you were interested in pursuing acting yourself?
MG: There’s no name for it, but I think I’ve developed my own directorial vocabulary that’s effective for mounting plays in smaller spaces where there’s what I call the 3 1/2 wall—where it’s neither immersive nor proscenium. I think my own intuitions are maybe closest to Meisner: while my writing is heavily psychological, I’m more interested in moment-to-moment action, physical choices and impulse.
HS: What are you working on next, and what are your plans for BCTR in the months to come?
MG: I’m developing a new play called Over the Moon, and at BCTR we’ll be featuring a number of newer, younger playwrights who I and others think are great. I’d also like to do some Shakespeare.
WORDS Hillary Sproul
PHOTOGRAPHY Sophia Englesberg