I interview Jeffrey Seller about his memoir, Kid Theater, which is a coming-of-age tale from the most successful American producer of our time. He is one of the masterminds behind the Tony Award winning musicals Rent, Avenue Q, In the Heights, and Hamilton. He is the only producer to have mounted two Pulitzer Prize-winning musicals—Hamilton and Rent. He also revolutionized theater accessibility with the $20 ticket lottery for Rent, making theater accessible for many.
NOTE: The June 27th episode will conclude this season. We will return in the fall for a brand new slate.
FROM THE PUBLISHER:
Theater Kid is his gripping memoir about fighting through a hardscrabble childhood to make art on one’s own terms, chasing a dream against many odds, and finding acceptance and community. Before he was producing the musical hits of our generation, Jeffrey was just a kid coming to terms with his adoption, trying to understand his sexuality, and eager to escape his dysfunctional household in a poor neighborhood just outside Detroit. We see him find his voice through musical theater and move to New York, where he is determined to shed his past and make a name for himself on Broadway.
But moving to the big city is never easy—especially not at the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis—and Jeffrey learns to survive and thrive in the colorful and cutthroat world of commercial theatre. From his early days as an office assistant, to meeting Jonathan Larson and experiencing the triumph and tragedy of Rent, to working with Lin-Manuel Miranda on In the Heights and Hamilton, Jeffrey pulls back the curtain on the joyous and gut-wrenching process of making new musicals, finding new audiences, and winning multiple Tony Awards.
ABOUT JEFFERY SELLER
Jeffrey Seller is a Tony Award-winning American theatrical producer best known for his work on Rent, Avenue Q, In the Heights, and Hamilton, as well as inventing Broadway’s first rush ticket and lottery ticket policies. After graduating from the University of Michigan in 1986, Jeffrey moved to New York City where he worked, as a publicist, booking agent, and producer. With his business partner Kevin McCollum he produced three Best Musical Tony Award-winning Broadway shows; Rent, Avenue Q, and In the Heights. With increasingly expensive Broadway ticket prices, Seller and McCollum invented Broadway’s first rush ticket policy early on in the production of Rent. The idea was to keep the show accessible for people “in their 20s and 30s, artists, Bohemians-the people for whom Jonathan Larson wrote the show.” A select number of front row tickets would be sold for $20 on a first come per-serve basis. Rush tickets became so popular that people began to sleep on the streets outside the theater to get a spot at the front of the line. Out of concern for the safety of those who participated in the Rush policy Seller and McCollum created Broadway’s first lottery ticket policy, which kept cheap tickets accessible to a young audience by selling $20 tickets to the winners of a drawing. Together Seller and McCollum also produced De La Guarda, Andrew Lippa’s The Wild Party, High Fidelity, and the revival of West Side Story. After working with Lin-Manuel Miranda on In the Heights, he produced Hamilton. Hamilton has gone on to receive widespread critical acclaim and commercial success. In June 2016, Hamilton received 11 Tony awards of a record-breaking 16 nominations, including a Best Musical win for Seller, making it his fourth Tony Award.
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