NEW YORK (AP) — Jeffrey Seller, the Broadway producer behind such landmark hits as “Rent,” “Avenue Q” and “Hamilton,” didn’t initially write a memoir for us. He wrote it for himself.
“I really felt a personal existential need to write my story. I had to make sense of where I came from myself,” he says in his memento-filled Times Square office. “I started doing it as an exercise for me and I ultimately did it for theater kids of all ages everywhere.”
Seller’s “Theater Kid” — which he wrote even before finding a publishing house — traces the rise of an unlikely theater force who was raised in a poor neighborhood far from Broadway, along the way giving readers a portrait of the Great White Way in the gritty 1970s and ‘80s. In it, he is brutally honest.
“I am a jealous person. I am an envious person,” he says. “I’m a kind person, I’m an honest person. Sometimes I am a mean person and a stubborn person and a joyous person. And as the book shows, I was particularly in that era, often a very lonely person.”
This cover image released by Simon & Schuster shows “Theater Kid: A Broadway Memoir” by Jeffrey Seller. (Simon & Schuster via AP)
Seller, 60. who is candid about trysts, professional snubs, mistakes and his unorthodox family, says he wasn’t interested in writing a recipe book on how to make a producer.
“I was more interested in exploring, first and foremost, how a poor, gay, adopted Jewish kid from Cardboard Village in Oak Park, Michigan, gets to Broadway and produces ‘Rent’ at age 31.”
Unpacking Jeffrey Seller
It is the story of an outsider who is captivated by theater as a child who acts in Purim plays, directed a musical by Andrew Lippa, becomes a booking agent in New York and then a producer. Then he tracks down his biological family.
“My life has been a process of finally creating groups that I feel part of and accepting where I do fit in,” he says. “I also wrote this book for anyone who’s ever felt out.”
Jonathan Karp, president and CEO of Simon & Schuster, says he isn’t surprised that Seller delivered such a strong memoir because he believes the producer has an instinctive artistic sensibility.
“There aren’t that many producers you could say have literally changed the face of theater. And I think that’s what Jeffrey Seller has done,” says Karp. “It is the work of somebody who is much more than a producer, who is writer in his own right and who has a really interesting and emotional and dramatic story to tell.”
The book reaches a crescendo with a behind-the-scenes look at his friendship and collaboration with playwright and composer Jonathan Larson and the making of his “Rent.”
Seller writes about a torturous creative process in which Larson would take one step forward with the script over years only to take two backward. He also writes movingly about carrying on after Larson, who died from an aortic dissection the day before “Rent’s” first off-Broadway preview.
“‘Rent’ changed my life forever, but, more important, ‘Rent’ changed musical theater forever. There is no ‘In the Heights’ without ‘Rent,’” Seller says. “I don’t think there’s a ‘Next to Normal’ without ‘Rent.’ I don’t think there’s a ‘Dear Evan Hansen’ without ‘Rent.’”
“Hamilton” producer Seller accepts the award for best musical at the Tony Awards in New York on June 12, 2016. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)
What about ‘Hamilton’?
So enamored was Seller with “Rent” that he initially ended his memoir there in the mid-’90s. It took some coaxing from Karp to get him to include stories about “Avenue Q,” “In the Heights” and “Hamilton.”
“‘Hamilton’ becomes a cultural phenomenon. It’s the biggest hit of my career,” Seller says. “It’s one of the biggest hits in Broadway history. It’s much bigger hit than ‘Rent’ was. But that doesn’t change what ‘Rent’ did.”
In a sort of theater flex, the memoir’s audiobook has appearances by Annaleigh Ashford, Danny Burstein, Darren Criss, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Lindsay Mendez, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Andrew Rannells, Conrad Ricamora and Christopher Sieber. There’s original music composed by Tony- and Pulitzer Prize-winner Tom Kitt.
The portrait of Broadway Seller offers when he first arrives is one far different from today, where the theaters are bursting with new plays and musicals and the season’s box office easily blows past the $1 billion mark.
In 1995, the year before “Rent” debuted off-Broadway, there was only one Tony Award-eligible candidate for best original musical score and the same for best book — “Sunset Boulevard.” This season, there were 14 new eligible musicals.
“I think that’s just such a great moment in Broadway history to say, ‘This is before ’Rent,’ and then look what happens after. Not because ‘Rent’ brought in an era of rock musicals, but it opened the doors to more experimentation and more unexpected ideas, more variety.”
He is drawn to contemporary stories with modern issues and all four of his Tony wins for best musical are set in New York.
“For me, shows that were about people we might know, that were about our issues, about our dreams, about our shame, about things that embarrass us — that’s what touched me the most deeply,” he says. “I was looking to have the hair on my arms rise. I was looking to be emotionally moved.”