[2] His father, Henry, worked as an advertising salesman; his mother, Maxine (Dubin), was a millinery model.

[1] Although he intended to go into science or business, his interest in theater was piqued when he enrolled in a modern drama workshop.

[4] He started to compose short plays featuring "outlandish" and long-winded titles, which were staged while he was still an undergraduate.

[1][4] It also began a long-standing collaboration with Roger L. Stevens, who participated in the production of all of Kopit's work until 1984, with the sole exception of Nine.

While Clive Barnes described the latter production in The New York Times as "a gentle triumph" and complimented Kopit for attempting a "multilinear epic", his colleague Walter Kerr likened it to "bad burlesque".

[1] John Lahr considered Indians to be the "most probing and the most totally theatrical Broadway play of this decade".

There, he wrote an improvisatory pageant lasting an entire day for the United States Bicentennial titled Lewis and Clark: Lost and Found.

[4] It received three Tony nominations, with Constance Cummings (who played the main character) winning best actress.

[1] The play was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, marking the second time Kopit's work was nominated for the award.

[1] For instance, End of the World (1984) lasted only four weeks on Broadway, before running at the Rainbow Theater in Norwalk State Technical College.

[1] However, investors withdrew from the Kopit–Yeston venture when The Phantom of the Opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber debuted at the West End in 1986 and on Broadway two years later.

[10] The two persisted nonetheless, and Phantom was released as a television mini-series in 1990, before having its stage premiere in Houston one year later.

The principal cast consisted of Daniel Day-Lewis, Judi Dench, Nicole Kidman, Marion Cotillard, Penélope Cruz, Sophia Loren, Kate Hudson, and Fergie.