What Is Theater's Place In The Digital World?

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 become] unbearably safe, boring and ideological.” Over the course of our conversations that happened after a few readings of a play he’s developing, Zoomers, I got a sense of his frustration with the decline of American theatre. Still, his strivings, as evidenced in the community he’s building at the Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research, where he shows his plays and teaches, paint a picture of a hopeful, innovative, and inspired artist actively working towards making theatre relevant to a new generation.