Kopit's earliest professional works—mostly one-acts—were parodies and tragicomic or black farces, prefiguring the play which solidified his reputation, Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad (1960). After being staged at Harvard and a local commercial theater and later in London, Oh Dad began a New York run of 454 performances at the Phoenix Theatre on February 26,1962. The play subsequently enjoyed a successful tour of the United States and Europe.

On the basis of Oh Dad, critics identified Kopit as a promising absurdist playwright, a judgment that, given Kopit's great diversity, proved to be both premature and too restrictive a label. With the bow of Indians, first produced in London by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1968, Kopit gave notice that his work defied categorization. A protest play, Indians simultaneously debunks the American myths created to vindicate both the massacre...