Zoomers and Other Plays [Minkštas viršelis]

With his breakout hit play Dimes Square, dramatist Matthew Gasda was instantly anointed as the chronicler of the downtown set, a satirist-cum-anthropologist of TikTok microcelebrities, reactionary edgelords, and hapless hangers-on. But what happens after the party's over, after talent is celebrated, envied, mocked, and memed? Where do you go from there?

In Zoomers and Other Plays, Gasda serves up sharply observed, richly ambivalent depictions of a perpetually hungover present. Across these four new plays-One-Winged Dove, Morning Journal, the Dimes Square sequel Afters, and the collection's title play-spiritual longing and unbearable loss sit uneasily alongside meretriciousness and naked cruelty. Through a generational haze of pot, porn, and video games, Gasda memorably captures our era in all its glory and confusion.

Four plays from acclaimed playwright and downtown impresario Matthew Gasda.

Having made his debut with Dimes Square as a satirist of the self-chronicling generation, Matthew Gasda has deepened and complexified his approach to drama with Zoomers—a collection that goes beyond cataloguing the comic misadventures of millennial grifters to touch on subtler themes and more mature tones. His characters now are not merely breaking with tradition, brashly, but find themselves poignantly broken as well. These new plays, which still capture the tumultuous absurdity of our present moment while expanding Gasda’s purview across generations and scenarios, ask new questions: What happens after the party’s over, after talent is celebrated, envied, mocked, and memed? Where do you go from there?

This collection features four of Gasda’s newest and most penetrating works: Zoomers (“Gasda goes full Warhol with his art … The result is a play filled with humorous moments that feel real.”—New York Times), Afters (the “sequel” to Dimes Square), One-Winged Dove, and Morning Journal.