1. Arthur Kopit was a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist for Indians and Wings.
29 Facts About Arthur Kopit
1. 2.
Arthur Kopit was nominated for three Tony Awards: Best Play for Indians and Wings, as well as Best Book of a Musical for Nine.
3.
Arthur Kopit won the Vernon Rice Award in 1962 for Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad and was nominated for another Drama Desk Award in 1979 for Wings.
4.
Arthur Kopit's father, Henry, worked as an advertising salesman; his mother, Maxine, was a millinery model.
5.
Arthur Kopit consequently adopted the surname of his stepfather, George Kopit, after his mother remarried.
6.
Arthur Kopit studied engineering at Harvard University, graduating in 1959.
7.
Arthur Kopit started to compose short plays featuring "outlandish" and long-winded titles, which were staged while he was still an undergraduate.
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Arthur Kopit studied with dramatist Robert Chapman, who was the director of Harvard's Loeb Drama Center.
9.
Arthur Kopit ultimately won the contest with a $250 prize, even though he had dismissed the play's commercial potential.
10.
Arthur Kopit was conferred the Vernon Rice Award and Outer Critics Circle Award for Best New Play in 1962.
11.
Arthur Kopit was inspired to write Indians after reading a newspaper article of a shooting incident in Saigon.
12.
Arthur Kopit ventured into incorporating the carnival aspects of avant-garde theater from the previous decade into plays.
13.
Arthur Kopit went on to teach at Wesleyan University around 1975.
14.
Arthur Kopit was inspired by the recovery experience of his stepfather, who suffered a stroke in 1976 that left him unable to speak.
15.
Arthur Kopit won a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Play and an Obie Award for her performance.
16.
The play was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, marking the second time Arthur Kopit's work was nominated for the award.
17.
Arthur Kopit was responsible for authoring the musical's book, which consisted of the dialogue and parts that were not sung.
18.
Arthur Kopit revised it up to the time of its debut on Broadway, where it ran for nearly two years.
19.
Arthur Kopit received his third and final Tony nomination, this time for best book of a musical.
20.
Arthur Kopit's subsequent plays garnered much promotion now that he was a well-known writer, but were not as successful.
21.
Arthur Kopit collaborated again with Yeston for Phantom, starting in 1983.
22.
Arthur Kopit produced an NBC police procedural titled "Hands of a Stranger" in 1987.
23.
Arthur Kopit later wrote Road to Nirvana and Success, both of which debuted in 1991.
24.
Arthur Kopit soon retitled it Because Arthur Kopit Can after the predicted eponymous problems did not take place.
25.
Arthur Kopit donated his papers to the Fales Library at New York University in 2005.
26.
Arthur Kopit taught at Yale University and the City College of New York throughout his career.
27.
Arthur Kopit was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2017.
28.
Arthur Kopit died on April 2,2021, at his home in Manhattan.
29.
Arthur Kopit was 83 and suffered from progressive Lewy body dementia prior to his death.