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 his absence: an unexplored possibility, a half-felt need. But there is always the chance that he will make a more dramatic entrance.
It is difficult to introduce Gasda’s work without making it sound completely obnoxious. He first came to notice as part of New York’s downtown “Dimes Square” scene, a much-discussed phenomenon that evaporated before anyone could quite say what it was—opinions varied from “a unique coming-together of exciting young creators” to “a bunch of posers talking about each other on the internet”—though not before Gasda had written Dimes Square, the title play of this debut collection. As with the other plays, nothing much happens in it, apart from people sitting around talking about themselves and each other. Even when the characters are not actually twentysomething New Yorkers, they could be: Theyʼre neurotic artists or differently-neurotic corporate types, given to telling each other things like, “I’m just not going to validate your narcissistic delusions” or “When I go literally insane, you have only yourself to blame.”
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