Lewis Niles Black is a Grammy Award-winning stand-up comedian, playwright, and actor who was born on August 30, 1948 in Silver Spring, Maryland. He was brought up in a middle-class family of Jewish descent, eventually graduating from Springbrook High School back in 1966. One of his earliest experiences as a playwright came during his undergraduate college days at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. While he was studying there, he also became a brother of the Pi Lambda Phi International fraternity. Black would eventually go on to earn a Masters in Fine Arts degree from the Yale School of Drama in 1977.
One of his earliest occupations was as the playwright in residence and associate artistic director of Steve Olsen's West Bank Café Downstairs Theatre Bar, located in Hell's Kitchen in New York City. Black has worked together with lyricist and composer Rusty Magee on numerous one-act plays. Also together with Magee, he wrote a musical titled The Czar of Rock and Roll, which first played at the Alley Theatre in Houston back in 1990. Among the television productions that Black has worked on are My Gym Partner's a
Monk ey, Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law, and
Law and Order : Special Victims Unit.
(Photo courtesy of Comedy Central)