Hamilton Producer Jeffrey Seller's Memoir Speaks to the Theater Kid in Us All

Big-time Broadway producer Jeffery Seller has written a book for the misfits. It may be hard to believe given his track record of producing a veritable hit parade of shows like Rent, Avenue Q, In the Heights and Hamilton, but at one time, he wasn’t exactly part of the in-crowd. Seller has long been an advocate for making theater more accessible. He is credited with implementing Broadway’s first lottery and rush ticket policies, an innovation especially for Rent to ensure that the kinds of people whose life stories were being depicted onstage could realistically afford to see it. His new memoir Theater Kid resulted from a desire to uplift the outcasts and show them that there is a seat, and possibly even a career path, for everyone in the theater.

The Broadway Show's Tamsen Fadal sat down with Seller in his swanky, accolade-laden office in Midtown Manhattan to discuss the autobiographical work. “How does a poor, gay, adopted kid who feels like an outsider get from this crummy neighborhood outside Detroit, to Broadway? I wasn’t even sure myself how that was possible,” he says.

Seller has been working on Broadway for almost 30 years and still goes to work with a sense of wonder. “I’m a student of the American musical and in so many ways, Theater Kid is a book that studies the American musical,” he notes. “From the great musicals that I saw when I was 13 and 14 like A Chorus Line and Pippin to, of course, Rent and the shows that I’ve produced.”

As for the secret formula for a record-shattering, groundbreaking musical, Seller doesn’t know it, only feels it. “When the hair on my back starts standing up,” he says, and he hopes other people will feel it too. “We make what we make, and then we find out what it is, and then we find out who it’s for, and then we figure out where it belongs.” He sees his role as a producer as being a kind of guidance counselor in service to the writer and director. Sometimes that means being a cheerleader, other times a critic.

As for Rent, the expectation was that it would be a “little off-Broadway show.” One that could only go as far as the East Village. Seller confesses he and Rent's playwright, composer and lyricist Jonathan Larson never discussed bringing the show to Broadway. That little musical became a bittersweet triumph. Tragically, Larson never lived to see Rent become a Pulitzer Prize-winning cultural phenomenon. He died of an aortic aneurysm three hours after dress rehearsal. “He saw it in front of an invited audience one time,” Seller recalls.

He observes that both Larson and Hamilton's Lin-Manuel Miranda had the vision and ambition to rewrite the American musical vernacular. Seller says his own book is intended “for anyone who has felt outside, not regarded, not invited to the party. We all feel it," he commiserates. “Then we go to the theater and it makes us feel like we’re in.”

Watch the full interview in the video below!