Cohen was born in 1938 in Washington, D.C. His theatrical education began as an undergraduate student at Dartmouth College and UC Berkeley and earned his DFA (Doctorate in Fine Arts) in 1965 at the Yale School of Drama. Soon after, Cohen joined the charter faculty of the brand new campus of the University of California, Irvine, where he served as the its founding departmental chair of drama for twenty-five years, and, since 2015, has become an emeritus Bren Fellow and Claire Trevor Professor of Drama for the University. He is an accomplished director, scholar, drama critic, and theorist, and his approach to stage acting, which employs a system he refers to as "GOTE," has been acknowledged as one of the most widely used approaches to stage acting in use today.[3] Cohen resides in Laguna Beach, California with his wife Lorna. They have two children, Michael and Whitney.