What’s this newsletter about?
being dramatic is a new, monthly travelogue about making a life in the arts, from playwright Kate Tarker.
If you subscribe, you’ll get regular updates including reflections on life and craft, writing prompts, and of course, news about performance dates, playwriting classes, and upcoming publications.
I’m still experimenting with everything I want this to be and contain! You can expect this newsletter to keep growing and deepening over the course of 2024.
Who is writing this?
Hi friend. I’m Kate. I’m an American playwright, born in New Jersey, but I grew up bilingually in a rural town in Germany. I recently relocated to Providence, RI after many years based in Brooklyn, but I still primarily make theater in NYC.
I write offbeat, funny, countercultural plays. I’m generally preoccupied with language, gender and bodies, place and belonging, and how to be a person in this beat-up world. My storytelling is punky, playful, innovative, and irreverent, but also sincere.
My most recent play, Montag, garnered two Obie Awards in its premiere production at Soho Rep., and was subsequently produced internationally at Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe, Germany. Additional plays include THUNDERBODIES (Soho Rep.), Dionysus Was Such a Nice Man (The Wilma, FoolsFURY), and Laura and the Sea (Rivendell Theatre Ensemble).
The press has called my work "brilliant + highbrow" (New York Magazine), "staggeringly original" (The San Francisco Chronicle), and "screamingly funny" (The New York Times).
I’m a graduate of the Yale School of Drama, and I’ve taught at institutions such as MIT, Connecticut College, The Playwrights’ Center, PlayPenn, University of The Arts, and more.
Why did I start this newsletter now?
It’s been an astonishing, dizzying few years of crisis and contraction in theater, TV, and film (not to mention music, media, publishing, podcasting, arts journalism, higher education, and many more industries… nothing is happening in a vacuum).
And yet: I’m still standing. Though it’s been an undeniably tough time, I still don’t want to quit the industry to become a travel nurse. I am practicing a demented kind of optimism here, which is perhaps just another word for love.
In addition to sharing news about my own upcoming work, I will aim to contribute as I can to an essential conversation about this moment in the arts: what’s working, what’s really not, and how some intrepid souls manage to make it work regardless.
Who is this for?
In addition to those who already know me and my work and just want to stay in the loop (thank you, I love you!)…
I’ll write about things relevant to theater fans, playwrights, theater makers across disciplines, TV & film people, producers, screenwriters, philanthropists, journalists, novelists, poets, academics, gossip hounds, culture vultures… and if you’ve read this far, probably to YOU.
You can join this conversation by subscribing below.
Where else can you find me online?
Website: katetarker.com
