Arthur Kopit

Arthur Lee Kopit (born May 10, 1937, New York City) is an American playwright. He is a three-time Tony Award nominee: Best Play, Indians, 1970; Best Play, Wings, 1979; and Best Book of a Musical, for Nine, 1982. He won the Vernon Rice Award in 1962 for his play Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad and was nominated for another Drama Desk Award in 1979 for his play Wings.^[1]

Kopit attended Lawrence High School in Lawrence, Nassau County, New York.^[2]

Kopit attended Harvard University. His first plays were staged while still an undergraduate at Harvard University. Later, Kopit taught at Wesleyan University, Yale University, and the City College of New York.^[3] In 2005, Kopit donated his papers to the Fales Library at NYU.

Works

• Chamber Music (1962 or 1965) -- published in the collection Chamber Music and Other Plays including Chamber music, The questioning of Nick, Sing to me through open windows, The hero, The conquest of Everest, The day the whores came out to play tennis
• Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad (1963)
• Indians (1969),simultaneously a review of America's treatment of Native Americans and a critique of the Vietnam War
• Wings (1978),a more somber story of a stroke victim's recovery
• Nine (1982), an adaptation of the Federico Fellini's film "8 1/2"
• Good Help is Hard to Find (1982)
• End of the World with Symposium to Follow (1984),a mordant investigation of the arms race and nuclear destruction.
• Road to Nirvana (1991)
• Success (published in Plays in One Act, Ecco Press, 1991)
• Phantom (1992), a musical version of The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux that has been overshadowed by the more popular (though less critically acclaimed) version by Andrew Lloyd Weber.
• Y2K (2000)--Subsequently published under the title BecauseHeCan

References

External links

• The Fales Library guide to the Arthur Kopit Papers
• Arthur Kopit at the Internet Movie Database
• Arthur Kopit at the Internet Broadway Database

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