Steve's Bio

For years, Steve Kaplan has been one of the industry’s most sought-after experts on comedy. In addition to having taught at UCLA, NYU, Yale and other top universities, Steve has consulted and taught workshops at companies such as HBO, DreamWorks, Disney, Aardman Animation, NBC-Universal’s Writers on the Verge, Sony Pictures Network India, Globo Brazil, and others. He’s the author of the best-selling The Hidden Tools of Comedy, The Comic Hero’s Journey and is currently working on a third book about writing comedy for television.

In New York, Steve was co-founder and Artistic Director of Manhattan Punch Line Theatre, where he developed writers such as Peter Tolan (Analyze This, The Larry Sanders Show), writer and producer David Crane (Friends, Episodes), writer/producer Tracy Poust (Ugly Betty, Will & Grace), Michael Patrick King (Sex and The City, And Just Like That), David Ives (Venus in Fur),  Howard Korder (Boardwalk Empire), John Leguizamo (Mambo Mouth), David Fury (The Tick, Buffy, The Vampire Slayer), Lisa Loomer (The Waiting Room), Tom Donaghy (The Mentalist), Kenneth Lonergan (Manchester by the Sea) and Mark O’Donnell (Hairspray) and introduced such performers as Lewis Black, Mercedes Ruehl, Oliver Platt, and Nathan Lane.

In Los Angeles, he created the HBO New Writers Project, discovering HBO Pictures screenwriter Will Scheffer (Big Love), Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage and performer/writer Sandra Tsing Loh (Aliens in America),; and the HBO Workspace, a developmental workshop in Hollywood that introduced and presented performers such as Jack Black and Tenacious D, Kathy Griffin, Bob Odenkirk and David Cross (Mr. Show), Nia Vardalos (My Big Fat Greek Wedding), and Paul F. Tompkins. At the Workspace, he was Executive Producer for the award-winning HBO Original Programming documentary DROP DEAD GORGEOUS. Steve has directed in regional theaters and Off-Broadway (including Sandra Tsing Loh’s ALIENS IN AMERICA at Second Stage).

In addition to private coaching and one-on-one consultations, Steve has taught his Comedy Intensive workshops to thousands of students in the United States and countries around the world, including London, Toronto, Galway, Athens, Paris, Tel Aviv, Sydney, Melbourne, Rio, Munich, New Zealand, and Singapore. He also teaches courses online to writers, actors, directors, producers, and executives around the world.

He lives happily in the Southwest with his beautiful and talented wife Kathrin King Segal and their three cats.