Structure: Six ‘in-person” sessions over Zoom, two hours each
Cost: $325
Time: 2pm - 4pm (ET)
Dates: Tuesdays, April 16 - May 21, 2024

This is the final round of this class for 2024, but you can email me to join a waitlist for future classes. I give folks on the waitlist an early heads up.

CLASS DESCRIPTION
Have you been wanting to write something new, but life keeps getting in the way? Does perfectionism tend to freeze you up? Have you been having trouble starting... or sticking with your idea through the finish line? Could you use an inspiring community, fresh perspectives, and weekly accountability?

If you relate to any of the above, join me for this playwriting sprint. We will write courageous Zero Drafts: the discovery draft where you figure out what you're trying to say and how to say it. We will write fast and furious, go deeper into what we need to write, and explore the edges of our curiosities. Not every page we write will make total sense, but those are next draft problems! Get it all out of your head now so you can keep shaping it later.

WHAT TO EXPECT
This journey will be fun and terrifying all at once! You will write 10 pages every week, except for one week of your choosing where you only have to write 5 (phew!).

Your ultimate mission is to complete 45 pages by our final session, with a beginning, middle, and an end.

WHAT YOU’LL COME AWAY WITH
You'll come away from this class with an adventurous and uninhibited early draft of something that feels vibrant, honest, alive, and uniquely you.

You’ll experience the deep satisfaction of achieving something you really wanted to achieve, and of rejuvenating and honoring your creativity.

And you’ll gain some new practical tools for writing and thinking about plays and process.

WHO THIS CLASS IS FOR
Draft Zero is geared toward intermediate to advanced writers with at least some playwriting experience. Brave beginners are also welcome, if you’re ready to jump in with wild abandon! Email me if you’re unsure about your experience level.

Previous sprinters have zoomed in from all over the U.S., and more recently, internationally as well. They have included: award-winning TV writers, the Chair of an MFA Playwriting Program, emerging playwrights, established playwrights, devised theater creators, as well as actors, novelists, and poets writing their first plays.

CLASS STRUCTURE
The class format is community time, mini-lessons on craft, discussion, and short readings, followed by writing exercises. Please note: This is not a traditional workshopping class!

HOW TO PREPARE
Bring a willingness to experiment and surprise yourself! We’re going to jump in the deep end. A week before our first session, I will also ask you to do some structured daydreaming about what you want to work on.
You’re also welcome to do as much or as little prep work, or pre-writing, as you like. I’m here to augment your process, not supplant it.

ADDITIONAL DETAILS
-The class is capped at 15 students.
-Sessions are held over Zoom and make use of Google Classroom.
-Recordings of class sessions will be available for review for 36 hours afterwards. (But please note, this is a live, in-person class. Only sign up if you can make it to most of the sessions.)

IF YOU CRAVE MORE SUPPORT AND FEEDBACK…
I’m happy to go deeper into the process with you. You can pair this class with booking one-on-one consulting sessions as needed. Some folks use the class to unselfconsciously write their first draft and then schedule a draft feedback session for some time afterwards. I do encourage you to embrace the “connect with your inner voice first and foremost” aspect of Draft Zero; it’s one of the things that makes this class special.

CANCELLATION POLICY
If you cancel your registration up to a week before the first session, you will receive a full refund. During the week before we start, you’ll receive a 50% refund. There are no refunds or partial refunds starting 24 hours prior to class time.

ABOUT ME
I’m a professional playwright living in Providence, RI, with past productions in NYC, Chicago, San Francisco, and Philadelphia. I also had my first international production in Germany this fall. I studied under Paula Vogel at the Yale School of Drama, where I received my MFA in 2014. The press have called my plays “screamingly funny” (NYTimes), “staggeringly original” (SF Chronicle), “exuberant” (The New Yorker), and “highbrow + brilliant” (NY Magazine).

I consider my teaching, mentoring, and coaching an essential and joyful part of my creative practice. I’m currently a lecturer at MIT and will also be lecturing at Yale College this fall. I have additionally taught at Connecticut College, Wesleyan, Brown, PlayPenn, University of the Arts, Salve Regina, and Macalester College. I first taught Draft Zero through the Playwrights' Center of Minneapolis in November 2022; it's been an enormously popular class and I now offer it independently as my schedule permits.

As a writer, I'm driven by a relentless and rebellious curiosity about what the medium of live theater can do. I write countercultural plays for smart, curious audiences, and trust in the powers of radical truth telling, community gathering, and collective effervescence to overhaul our most delusional and damaging cultural scripts.

If you have any additional questions, email me!

WHAT PREVIOUS SPRINTERS ARE SAYING

“The Draft Zero class really worked for me. It provided just what I needed- accountability, community, encouragement and permission to just keep writing and not edit my words or my thoughts.  I am really excited to now start on a first draft.  I would not have written so much or so freely without the class.”
- Bonnie Dudovitz  

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“Kate consistently offers super insightful writing prompts that quickly cut to the core of the work while expanding the vision of the work at hand. She is refreshingly honest about what happens behind the curtain of playwriting, while simultaneously providing a safe place to imagine, create, and ask questions.”
- Monica McCarthy

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“Kate Tarker is such a bright, warm, and welcoming presence, and she built a spectacular online community in such a short period of time. I learned so much about my craft, process, and play throughout our six weeks together. It was an absolutely fantastic experience to be her student!”
- Madi Fabber

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“Kate Tarker is a story doula of the highest order.”
-Danielle Frimer

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“DO THIS CLASS, Y'ALL. Kate is a fantastic teacher/writer/person, and taking this class pulled me out of over a year's worth of total stagnancy when I genuinely thought nothing would.”
-Natalie Ann Valentine

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“Kate Tarker’s Draft Zero class is the most productive playwriting course I’ve taken over the past five years. Kate’s easygoing disposition and sense of humor made me feel welcome immediately. However, Kate should not be mistaken for a pushover; she demands you get your butt in a chair and produce pages every week. Unlike other similar courses I’ve taken, her class actually got me to write, rather than just think and talk about writing.

Each session, Kate was prepared to share her expert knowledge about the process of a first draft and provided tons of tips for various roadblocks people faced along the way. She was open to questions and allowed other students to share their expertise, but unlike many courses where the facilitator only ever diverts the question back to the asker– “what do you think would be best?”- Kate responded with the professional know-how that many of us are craving when we sign up for classes from established playwrights.

I ended the course with a “Draft Zero” and with much more confidence in my ability to consistently produce pages. If you have a chance to take a course with Kate Tarker, do it. You and the people you complain to about never getting enough writing done will be glad you did.”
- Kari Heistad

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“Draft Zero was da bomb. Kate creates a supportive portal of time to be raw and brutally honest in your writing, to get your pages done, and to have fun and surprise yourself. She’s like drano for your clogged emotional writer brain-tube.”
- Kate Banford

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“A huge thank you to Kate for her remarkable kindness and beautiful brain. I think her Draft Zero has amazingly allowed me to play and throw things against the wall in a new way. It has disrupted my stagnant process. In the last 48 hours I wrote 25 pages of a brand new play and brought it in to my writing group. What resulted was maybe the most engaging/vocal feedback I’ve ever experienced. All to say, the experience with Kate made me realize I held a pattern of slowly developing material with a tentativeness for the past several years. I now know that I can move full throttle into a draft, with zero f*cks, knowing it’s the thumbnail and come out with huge understanding to build on. That I can have similar results to my past methods, but faster, by letting go.”
- Will Brumley