Myq Kaplan, born Michael Kaplan, works as a stand-up comedian whose observational material leans heavily on linguistic twists. His New Jersey roots and Master’s degree in applied linguistics lend additional weight to that stylistic preference. Following receipt of his Bachelor’s from Brandeis University in 2000, he enrolled for several years of graduate study at Boston University, where serving as a senior resident assistant supplied free housing. While still a student he explored singing and songwriting, then shifted his energies toward stand-up.
He concentrated on developing his act inside Boston’s active comedy circuit, reaching the semifinal round of the Boston Comedy Festival in 2006. Summer 2007 brought wider exposure when he competed on season seven of Last Comic Standing and placed in the Top Five. Bolstered by that visibility, he began touring nationally and relocated to New York City in 2008 to focus on comedy full time. His first appearance on The Tonight Show came the next year. April 2010 brought both his solo Comedy Central Presents episode and the release of his debut album, Vegan Mind Meld, through BSeenMedia. The record examined his vegetarianism and Judaism while also pondering words such as duckling and dumpling.
Please Be Seated, issued by the same label in 2012, was a two-person show with Micah Sherman that blended stand-up and comedy songs. Meat Robot appeared the following year on Comedy Central Records. On 15 May 2014 the hour-long special Small, Dork, and Handsome premiered on Netflix; New Wave Dynamics made it available for streaming, download, and CD shortly afterward, and it reached the Billboard Top Ten comedy chart. Kaplan returned to reality television as a quarter-finalist on the tenth season of America’s Got Talent in 2015. During 2016, between club dates and television spots that included an episode of Conan, he appeared in Henry Phillips’ film Punching Henry alongside fellow comedians Tig Notaro, Sarah Silverman, and Jim Jefferies. His fifth album, No Kidding, was recorded at Doc’s Lab in San Francisco and released by A Special Thing in early 2017.
