Kaplan Comedy

For almost 15 years, our school has been the industry’s most sought-after expert on comedy writing and production. In addition to having taught at UCLA, NYU, Yale and other top universities, we created the HBO Workspace, the HBO New Writers Program and was co-founder and Artistic Director of Manhattan’s Punch Line Theatre.

Steve’s former students have Written or Co-written:

• Ugly Betty
• Big Love
• Everybody Loves Raymond
• Hairspray, with John Travolta
• The Heartbreak Kid, with Ben Stiller
• Rescue Me, The Class
• Tenacious D, Mean Girls 2
• Friends, Sex and the City
• Mr. Show, SNL
• The Daily Show w/Jon Stewart
• Will & Grace, Joey
• Late Night with Conan O’Brien
• Kathy Griffin: “Strong Black Woman” special
• Many Others!

From the industry’s top stars to first time comedy screen and TV writers, producers, directors and performers, Kaplan has worked with and coached the best. His Comedy Intensive seminar and workshop offers proven and practical methods and principles that help you reveal and understand comedy from the inside out: Why is something funny? How do you write funny? How do you make your characters funny? How do you structure a comedy story? How do you think funny so it translates from idea to page to screen? In addition to teaching his class, Kaplan has served as a consultant to such companies as Dreamworks, Disney, HBO and others.