Gary P. Cohen is the producing director of Plays-in-the-Park, a respected summer theater in New Jersey, where he has directed more than fifty plays and musicals. In the early 1970s he founded a 100-seat semiprofessional theater, where he honed his craft before joining Plays-in-the-Park in the 1980s. He is the author of The Community Theater Handbook (Heinemann, 2003).

Cohen has co-authored Off-B'way's Frankenstein, A New Musical and A High School Monster Musical with Mark Baron, as well as The Reluctant Dragon. A former William Morris agent, Cohen has also written and directed three 80's cult shot-on-video horror films: Video Violence Video Violence Il, and Captives, currently on DVD & Blu-ray.