David Kaplan has held classes for actors since 1975. He has taught and lectured at Bard, Clark, Hofstra, New York University, Columbia, Rutgers, the University of New Mexico, the Siberian Academy of Fine Arts (in Russian), and the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts. His professional students in New York and Los Angeles have won numerous stage awards, including the Tony. Three theater companies have formed out of Mr. Kaplan's classes, including Artificial Intelligence, the creators of the long-running Tony 'n Tina's Wedding.

During the same time, he has staged plays around the world with professional companies in indigenous languages and settings: King Lear in a Sufi interpretation in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, performed in the Uzbek language; Genet's The Maids in Ulaan Baator, Mongolia, performed in Mongolian; A Midsummer Night's Dream in Buddhist Buryatia, performed in the Buryat language with traditional shamanic imagery. In Russia, and in the Russian language, Mr. Kaplan staged the first production of the American comic classic Auntie Mame at the 200-year-old Penza Theater, and the first production of Tennessee Williams's Suddenly Last Summer (the subject of a TASS documentary), as well as Shakespeare's Macbeth, both in Samara, Russia.

Plays directed by Mr. Kaplan have appeared in 40 of the 50 United States. These include his own adaptations of Charles Finney's The Circus of Dr Lao, Stephen Foster's Beautiful Dreamer, and Gertrude Stein's Dr. Faustus Lights the Lights. More traditional repertory staged by Mr. Kaplan include Genet's The Maids in New York, Chekhov's Cherry Orchard in Los Angeles, and Tina Howe's Painting Churches for the Province-town Players. He has had the pleasure of staging spectacles at the Atlantic City Convention Center, in Las Vegas, at the Coney Island Wax Museum, and a multi-ethnic celebration (with animals) in the Central Park Zoo.

Since 1979, Mr. Kaplan has worked on two one-woman shows that he adapted and continues to direct. Among them is the long-running revival of Ruth Draper's monologues performed by Patricia Norcia. Over twenty years of rehearsals, Mr. Kaplan and Miss Norcia have built up a repertory of fourteen Draper pieces in twelve languages (some of them invented), which play for a total of nine hours. A portion of the Draper repertory performs annually to sold-out audiences at Carnegie Recital Hall in New York and has been presented in Tokyo, Munich, Rome, and London's West End. Mr. Kaplan's tribute to Mississippi writer Eudora Welty, Sister and Miss Lexie, has been performed by Brenda Currin since 1980 in critically acclaimed appearances throughout the United States.

Mr. Kaplan holds degrees from Clark University and the Yale School of Drama. His teachers include Jan Kott, Richard Gilman, Robert Brustein, Lee Breuer, Stanley Kaufman, Lou Criss, and, in Russia, Peter Monastersky.