The Timely Provocations of Matthew Gasda
“Novalis” was the nom de plume of the polymath Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg, an 18th-century German Romantic poet, novelist, and philosopher. Novalis is also the name of the Substack under which Matthew Gasda publishes daily entries in his “Writer’s Diary,” including philosophical ponderings, social observations, and short fiction. Gasda, like von Hardenberg, is a polymath: a diarist, poet, novelist, and playwright who has written some 17 plays and recently founded the Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research.
Gasda’s 2022 play , about a group of artists and media types set in a Chinatown loft, put him on the map, both literally and figuratively. , caught the attention of , who subsequently appointed Gasda (or, rather, claimed that he “appointed himself”) “the dramatist of the Dimes Square scene.” Geographically, Dimes Square is located on the eastern edge of Chinatown, the neighborhood at the juncture of Ludlow and Canal Street. It even has its own , where it is noted as “a symbol for a handful of associated countercultural and aesthetic movements centered in New York.” And indeed, in 2021, for those who circulated through its environs and breathed the air, or read about it in social media and came down to see what it was all about, it became a symbol for the wide-ranging intellectual and creative environment that emerged in downtown New York City during
