Matthew Gasda is a recurring person in the Collected Agenda archive, appearing 25 times across 25 issues between May 28, 2024 and February 15, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as "Morning Journal - Matthew Gasda's new play"; "Written by Matthew Gasda"; "a dark yet comedic family drama by Matthew Gasda". It most often appears alongside Los Angeles, New York, Night Club 101.
- Article page
- Matthew Gasda
- Mention count
- 25
- Issue count
- 25
- First seen
- May 28, 2024
- Last seen
- February 15, 2026
Outbound links
Issue trail
- COLLECTED AGENDA #2
- Statues Of Critics.
- I wish I had more to say about fashion week.
- Collected Agenda (lite)
- Moral Framework
- Burn my diaries
- Rules for Clarity
- How to Redeem Yourself
- [REDACTED] is awful
- The Strangest Hotel in New York
- mutually assured destruction
- Total Nightmare Policy
- Summer Break
- Coffeeshop Gossip
- Arrowhead expert
- City Built on Crystals
- Perfect Little Life
- Apocalyptic Ideation
- Void of Course
- Autumn Secrets
- Things that Happened Once I Gave Up Vice
- Winter (03)
- Florida, Massachusetts (03)
- COLLECTED AGENDA
- Yellow-all-around
Source context
Saturday, June 1 - Closet Sale at The Brooklyn Center for Theater Research. Admission is $5, or free with tickets to that evening’s performance of Morning Journal - Matthew Gasda’s new play.
Inline links: The Brooklyn Center for Theater Research, Morning Journal
Also Friday, September 13 from 7:30 - 9:30pm — Denmark opens at The Brooklyn Center for Theater Research. An eerie show to ring in Friday the Thirteenth. Written by Matthew Gasda, Directed by Tom Meglio, starring Sophia Englesberg.
Tonight, Saturday, September 21 from 7:30 - 9:30pm — Denmark continues The Brooklyn Center for Theater Research – “A dark yet comedic family drama by Matthew Gasda, directed by Tom Meglio.” As mentioned above, I really loved this play. Performances are listed through October 20, if you can’t make it tonight.
From 6:45pm - 9:45pm — The Brooklyn Center for Theater Research presents previews of Vanya on Huron Street. Translated by Albina Aleksandrova. Adapted and directed by Matthew Gasda.
Inline links: The Brooklyn Center for Theater Research, previews, Albina Aleksandrova, Matthew Gasda
Risotto David made for me + prints from Paris Wednesday, December 11 I went to the Russian Baths on Wall Street on my first day in New York. I still go often now. It’s not really of my own volition. It’s a family tradition. It’s still pouring today. It’s been pouring all week. I used to think the Russian Baths were all liminal space and Russian mob, but now it feels less secret. The Doritos are from Israel. Russian Jews and Russian Gentiles, I hear someone explaining in line behind me. The building is huge. The pool area does feel kind of like The Backrooms. I have night terrors every night. In my dreams, I am never stuck in places like this. My aunt likes the cold plunge. She can stay in it for seven minutes, far beyond the recommended time of three. The Wim Hof method recommends rapid bursts of breath coupled with exposure to the extreme cold. I’m in the Infrared Sauna. On Christmas, I will swim outside in Walden Pond. Wim Hof (the man) lost a finger, an ear, something detached in the retina of his eye… I can’t recall the specific injury but something bad happened swimming across an icy lake. He took it too far. When I get back to New York, I will swim off Orchard Beach. There’s a group that goes every morning. My aunt tells me you have to go to Orchard Beach in the winter. It’s like Siberia in the Winter. It’s finally getting cold enough to swim. On my Wednesday at the Russian Baths, I lose my keys. I lose the big rubber slippers that they give you on arrival. I can’t last very long in the extreme heat or the extreme cold. An actor in the infrared sauna is talking about how he can only memorize lines in the cold plunge. I’m thinking about how I’m in an infinite feedback loop where everyone I meet keeps being actors. We go to dinner at the Russian Restaurant at the spa. It’s called Matryoshka like the dolls. I only learn this later David and I split potato pancakes, salad olivier which is the one with mayonnaise and egg and chicken (delicious), beef stroganoff, steamed chicken pelmeni. More stroganoff and borscht and red wine is also passed around the table. I can’t drink red wine, so I drink ginger juice and ginger vodka instead. Afterwards, too full to continue. There are other plans tonight - a film, a party, I promised I would go and I never cancel plans but sometimes I do just neglect to show up. A very bad habit. Inertia ultimately breeds pure evil! Time doesn’t pass at Spa 88. Still pouring but dark now, when we emerge from the underground. Thursday, December 12 My abridged review of Dimes Square (revival) today. I didn’t see it the first time around - I wasn’t here. I was in Boston. I was in a sorority. I arrived in this godforsaken ecosystem after it was already dead. I’m kind of being facetious. I think people try to qualify eras too concretely. Concretely: Dimes Square (the play) is indeed a period piece. In the vein of all Matthew Gasda’s plays, it is emotionally rich, lucid, kind of yearning, which catches me off guard but I think adds depth. The thing I like most about Dimes Square is this: it’s not self serious but also it is not sneering. The best satire is actually quite sincere. This is why most satire is generally and particularly in contemporary culture, bad. Dimes Square (the play) is excellent. I will be publishing a stand alone review of the play here shortly. I already wrote the review but then I realized I was far too stuck on historical accuracy and far too personally tortured. In the meantime (from my notes) -- “The main fault of the characters in the play is that they are cruel, but the main critique of this scene in real life is that it is (was?) (is?) full of people who are pathetic”
From 7pm - 10pm at BCTR — A few tickets are still available for Vanya on Huron Street; “an adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s timeless classic with a new translation by Albina Aleksandrova. Directed by Matthew Gasda.”
Inline links: BCTR, Vanya on Huron Street
From 7:30pm - 10:00pm at Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research — Vanya on Huron Street closes. If you haven’t seen this production, now is your last chance - “an adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s timeless classic with a new translation by Albina Aleksandrova. Directed by Matthew Gasda.”
Inline links: Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research, Vanya on Huron Street
WHAT I DID Sunday, March 15 When I have a tablespoon of manuka honey with a sprinkle of sea salt before bed, I wake up feeling electric. My whole body is pulsing. It’s like a chemical reaction, almost. Very strange. When I record my letters like it’s a podcast or something, sitting at the marble kitchen table in my empty foggy living room, the recordings process and save like I am somewhere else. A restaurant nearby, maybe. The files label themselves. Finest Goods #1, Finest Goods #2, Finest Goods #9, Finest Goods #12. I do feel quite stupid, doing all of this. I’m sorry to speak like this. I’m sorry to be late or even absent, again. Long Island, Saint Patrick’s Day, my mom and my aunt and my cousins have me for dinner uptown and so I claw myself out of the apartment for this evening occasion. The health stuff is starting to feel more under control, thank god. It was starting to freak me out at the play last night. “There is no physical illness without mental connection, conceptualization, perception,” it was one of those words. Madelyn reminded me. I’m fine, really. I bought cold pressed rosehip oil and I bought multi-peptides + copper peptides. I bought four pints of ice cream to bring to the dinner tonight. I bought pink Kate Spade ballet flats and black Marc Jacobs riding boots and black manolo blahnik ballet flats, too, for soooo cheap vintage, but then when they arrived at my door, within minutes of arriving at my door, someone stole them! I am mostly upset because these things were a real splurge. I am also upset, because these things were one of a kind. Honestly, I am less upset about the one of a kind part. I am not too precious when it comes to things of fashion. The play last night was great. Matthew Gasda’s Uncle Vanya on Huron Street. Uncle Vanya at ArtX, because the water on Huron Street was shut off for the week. Admittedly, I never saw Uncle Vanya at The Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research in its original run, but I was glad to see it in this bigger space, here - the insularity and the claustrophobia and the suffocating sense of everybody speaking and nobody being heard given ever-so-slightly more air in this room of high ceilings than in a living room loft. November - I was in a too small airbnb outside Albany New York and I almost punched a hole in the glass window. There was too much gray sleet, and no escape. I did not break the window, but I was somewhat awestruck by the potential for violence elicited by even the early aughts of claustrophobia. Which is to say, this is a bit of how I felt while watching Vanya. Dimes Square was insular, but the characters kind of love it. Vanya is insular, and there is literally no escape. What happens when you cannot leave, when there is nowhere to go, when the path lays itself bare at your feet and the options are bleak? It is not a hopeful story, though not nihilistic really, either. George Olesky is brilliant as The Doctor, Bob Laine as a kind of hapless Vanya, Asli Mumtas as the beautiful and listless Yelena, Mia Vallet as Sonya, half bursting with youthful vigor and potential, and then veering into a nearly manic and finally resigned pitch, as it becomes clear there will be no actualization. No salvation, either. I have thought before that desperation reeks, but this play suggests instead, that it festers. The characters who can leave, do. Those who must stay, are forced to find something else. What that something is remains a bit ambiguous. Integrity, perhaps. Hope in death and in God. Monday, March 16 I entered into all this fugue state psychosis yesterday. The guy my friends ran into at the bar yesterday entered into all this unrequited love psychosis. People can be so evil. That’s the last thing I texted my boyfriend before I basically blacked out on Saturday: people can be so evil. In my glass house, it was pouring pouring pouring rain last night. I felt so nostalgic for that apartment last night, even as it still remains mine, now. I felt like I could suddenly remember what it was for this apartment to be all new. There was no clutter last June. There was a sudden arrival in a place that was suddenly mine. It was freshly cleaned and there was all this space, it was like infinity it was like, all this light, oh my god, all this air and light and space, this will never get old. My mother says that about the fields behind the house sometimes: I moved in and I wondered if it would ever get old and it never did, she says. But she’s been there twenty-five years. humid summer air and thrifted propped up fans still blowing hot air through the white wood corridors on august mornings. I’ve been here nine months and I am already starting to stagnate. Which I guess is to say: I’m spoiled or, maybe I’m boring. Last night, I was nothing but happy. Tuesday, March 17 How to redeem yourself? Wednesday, March 18 Places this week: Cafe Reggio, The Public Library, Elizabeth Street Garden, Lucien for drinks, Fanelli Cafe for dinner. My roof every morning and night because it is spring now. Spring again. Spring at last. Thursday, March 19 And something gives in a permanent way. New practices, new routines, you cannot continue like this, and so you wake up one day and you don't. There has been a lot that has been beautiful and then, there has been me taking myself out of all this beauty. And you don't become so didactic and harsh and full empty promises. You just give yourself some willpower and then you give yourself some peace. I'm feeling really really really really annoyed on the plane to El Salvador. I'm sorry. This part isn't supposed to be in the story. I will tell you the real story, soon. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Tuesday, March 25 From 6:30pm at McNally Jackson Seaport — Jamie Hood presents her new memoir Trauma Plot, in conversation with Rayne Risher-Quann.
Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!pGk7!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F121e430b-e68e-404a-8963-27f700eb191f_1286x832.png, presents her new memoir
From 7pm - 9:30pm at Artx — Matthew Gasda’s newest play Soonest Mended opens. - “the ultimate millennial relationship experiment.”
Inline links: Soonest Mended
From 7:30pm at Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research — Serpent Club Press celebrates the forthcoming issue with a reading and party. Hosted by Paul Franz, Matthew Gasda, and Robert Gittings. Readings by Ross Barkan, Greg Gerke, Anthony Galluzzo, Ella Schmidt and more.
From 8pm - late at Night Club 101 — I will be reading in the Domino Reading Series, alongside Jess Wolfe, Dani Narins, Ruby Hoffman, Gordon Glasgow, Jade Wootton, and Matthew Gasda. Gallipony x Solar System DJ set after the reading.
Inline links: Night Club 101, Domino Reading Series
From 7:30pm at Molasses Books — Matthew Gasda’s new novel The Sleepers debuts. I am working on a review of this book, so I will avoid too much commentary for now, but it is one my very favorite new releases of recent memory.
From 8pm - 11:30pm at Brooklyn Center For Theatre Research — The Metropolitan Review presents A Night of New Literature. 4 readers, 4 new books: Jules Tarranto, John Pistelli, Ross Barkan, and Matthew Gasda.
From 7pm at KGB Bar — Cracks in Pomo hosts a launch party for the release of the zine vol. Iii. I’ll be reading, along with Valerie Stivers, Matthew Gasda, and Jonah Howell. Join for drinks, chats, and discounted zines for sale . RSVP here. If you can’t come, order a copy of the zine here
From 8pm - 12pm at The Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research — a one night only reading of an AI generated play trained on all Matthew Gasda’s plays. Error 404: Play Not Found. Tickets are free but donations are encouraged. - “This will be done with ample drinking and unseriousness--but the experiment may also be interesting on a philosophical level.”
From 7:30 - 9:30pm at 236 West 73rd — One of your last opportunities to see By Morning. I saw and adored this play last week. I would see it again if I was in New York. - “Three brothers gather on the night of their parents' funeral in this classic American tragedy by Matthew Gasda.”
Inline links: By Morning.
From 8:30pm at Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research — Celebrate the launch of New Writing Volume III, ft Matt Gasda, Paul Franz, Ross Barkan, Emmalea, Russo, Ella Schmidt, and more.
Inline links: Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research
From 7pm - 9pm at ArtXnyc — Over the Moon opens - a play by Matthew Gasda about “ about the fear of being seen, the seduction of detachment, and the ache for a love that might actually undo you.” Party to follow at Funny Bar.
Ardor by Matthew Gasda - Image via BCTR Thursday, September 11 From 6:30pm - 8pm at Mast Books — Archway Editions presents the release of Olivia Kan-Sperling’s LITTLE PINK BOOK. - “Taking the form of a conversation with Jamieson Webster on the subject of Hysteric Literature, this will be both a literary summit and celebration of a significant new novel and experiment in form”
From 7pm at The Bench — BCTR hosts the first reading of Matthew Gasda’s The Last Days of Downtown - the final place in the Dimes Square cycle. Afterparty to follow. | Tickets here
From 8:45pm at Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research — Epiphanies begins; a new reading regular series that focuses on love (for other people or Nature or God) and religious experiences. The first event features readings by Matthew Gasda, Tara Isabella Burton, Stephen G. Adubato, Bob Lain, Sean Lynch, and more. Rooftop party with drinks and treats to follow the readings. Epiphanies is sponsored by Romanticon - “a revival of romantic letters: Sharing and performing the fruits of the intimate.”
From 8:40pm - 10:30pm at The Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research — Matthew Gasda presents a reading of Last Days of Downtown. The third play in the Dimes Square and Afters trifecta.
Inline links: Last Days of Downtown
From 10pm - 2am at Funny Bar — Matthew Gasda celebrates the release of Writer’s Diary (Rose Books) - copies available for sale.
From 7pm - 8:30pm at The Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research — This Time by Matthew Gasda returns - “a play about relationships with a metaphysical twist.” | Tickets here (plus another performance on Thursday)
From 8:00 - 10:15pm at 176 Delancey Street — A table read of The Last Days of Downtown (6th draft). Matthew Gasda’s third play in the Dimes Square and Afters trifecta. | tickets here
Inline links: here
From 7pm - 9pm at The Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research — MESSAGES by Matthew Gasda returns - “A work that reflects on the importance of human relationships in our lives, asking us “who would you get on the ark with?” | Tickets here. Additional shows: December 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
Inline links: The Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research, here
From 8:55 - 11:15pm at The Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research — Watch the playwriting process in motion and listen to a live reading of the FIFTH draft of “The Last Days of Downtown” by Matthew Gasda. Tickets here.
Inline links: The Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research, here
From 7:30pm - 10:15pm at Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research — Another table read of The Last Days of Downtown - “Watch the playwriting process in motion and listen to a live reading of the NINTH draft of “The Last Days of Downtown” by Matthew Gasda. | tickets here
Inline links: Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research, here
From 8pm - 11pm at The Center for Theatre Research — Matthew Gasda’s Doomers returns. “In humanity’s last act… who plays God?”
Inline links: The Center for Theatre Research, Doomers