Three-time Tony nominee Arthur Kopit died April 2 at his home in Manhattan. Born Arthur Koenig on May 10, 1937, in New York, his parents divorced when he was 2, and he later adopted his stepfather’s surname. He studied engineering at Harvard, but fell in love with theater during an elective modern drama workshop. While in Europe on a graduate fellowship, he entered a playwriting contest at Harvard and won.
The show, Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feelin’ So Sad (1962), ran for more than year Off-Broadway and earned Kopit the Drama Desk and Outer Circle awards, before transferring to Broadway. He returned Off-Broadway with Asylum (1963) and to Broadway with Indians (1969), which was named a Pulitzer finalist and earned Kopit his first Tony nomination. Kopit’s next play, Wings (1978), was also named a Pulitzer finalist and earned him Tony and Drama Desk nominations.
Kopit made his musical debut with the Tony-winning Nine (1982), which he wrote with composer Maury Yeston, earning his third Tony nomination. Below is Kathi Moss and the original cast in “Be Italian” at the 1982 Tony Awards.
The following year, Kopit and Yeston began working on a musical adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera, but Andrew Lloyd Webber’s version beat theirs to Broadway. The collaborators persisted, and the show premiered as a two-part TV miniseries in 1990, which you can watch below.
https://youtu.be/3JxlDwJwycQ
https://youtu.be/-SXytTUUffU
Kopit’s last Broadway premiere was the musical adaptation of Cole Porter’s High Society (1998), from which you can watch highlights below. That year, Kopit was also inducted as one of the inaugural class of the Off-Broadway Playwrights’ Sidewalk in front of the Lucille Lortel Theatre.
Kopit’s last film work was the 2009 adaptation of Nine, from which you can watch Fergie sing “Be Italian” below. Kopit was also a long-time member of the Dramatists Guild Council, head of The Lark Playwrights’ Workshop, and a 2017 inductee into the American Theatre Hall of Fame. Kopit is survived by his wife, Leslie Garis, and his children Alex, Ben, and Kat.