Theater Kid: A Broadway Memoir

by Jeffrey Seller

Overview

A coming-of-age tale from one of the most successful American producers of our time, Jeffrey Seller, who is the only producer to have mounted two Pulitzer Prize–winning musicals—Hamilton and Rent.

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 determined 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 completely pulls back the curtain on the joyous and gut-wrenching process of making new musicals, finding new audiences, and winning a Tony Award—all the while finding himself.

Told with Jeffrey’s candid and captivating voice, Theater Kid is a 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781668064184
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	05/06/2025
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.60(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Jeffrey Seller is one of the most successful American producers of our time. He produced the Tony Award–winning musicals Rent, Avenue Q, In the Heights, and Hamilton. His shows have garnered twenty-two Tony Awards, including four for Best Musical, and his Broadway productions and tours have grossed over $4.6 billion and reached more than 43 million attendees. Jeffrey 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 affordable for all.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One: The Accident CARDBOARD VILLAGE. That’s what the kids at school call my neighborhood. I hate that name, coined by a child poet to describe the tar shingles that cover our small houses, built fast and cheap on concrete slabs with no basements to protect us from tornadoes in Oak Park, Michigan, the poor enclave in a rising Jewish suburb just north of Detroit. It’s the neighborhood where the parents have less: less money, less education, less stability. And the kids are deemed less: less smart, less cooperative, less likely to succeed.

On the first day of middle school, my new locker mate looks over at me and asks, “You live in The Village?”

I freeze. My heart speeds up. Blood pumps to my head and ears.

“What?”

“Cardboard Village,” he says.

Caught, as if I’m in trouble, I blurt out one syllable.

“Yep.”

“What’s it like?” he asks.

“What’s what like?” I act like I don’t know what he’s talking about.

“You know, tornadoes. Where do you hide? You’re kind of like the little pig in the house made of straw.”

I don’t have an answer. I don’t want to hide. I want to escape the neighborhood that makes me ashamed. I want to escape the poverty that entraps me and my dark, dour family. Mom frowns, Dad erupts, and my fourteen-year-old older sister, Laurie, hides in her bedroom smoking cigarettes. They all fit together. They are tall and heavy; I’m paper-thin. They have dark hair and eyes; I’m blond-haired and blue-eyed. I’m the adopted son who looks and acts different. While they watch Detroit Lions football games, I write plays and make paper cutouts of trees and leaves and sunbursts to tape to my wall. I’m the answer to the Sesame Street quiz, “One of these things is not like the other.”

And yet.

I’m also the favorite. The light of the family. The boy everyone wants to be with even when I don’t want to be with them.

JUMP BACK TO JUNE 1974. I’m nine years old.

“Wanna serve some papers?” asks my dad. We have just finished dinner with Mom and Laurie. It is still light outside on this late spring night.

I do not want to go with my dad to serve papers, but I’m afraid to hurt his feelings.

“Um, I think I need to get ready for school tomorrow.” It’s a lame excuse and doesn’t stop him.

“Come on, keep me company, it’s only two papers,” he says.

“Go with your father,” says Mom. “Keep him company.”

“Sure,” I say.

We walk to the side drive, cracked like a broken plate, with weeds invading, and open the doors to his Ford LTD station wagon, bought used a couple years ago. I get in the passenger seat, pushing aside dirty napkins and an empty quart of buttermilk from Guernsey Farms, his favorite roadside dairy stand. He can drink a quart of buttermilk a day.

“Just throw that stuff on the floor,” says Dad as he drops his weight onto the front seat, which bounces the car toward him like a rowboat about to tip. Dad is a giant next to my small nine-year-old body—he’s six-foot-three and 250 pounds. His sword-like eyebrows burn red and the curly crimson hair on his head is receding, but still forms its own burning bush. He’s an enormous man, whose size provides safety and entertainment. There is a picture in our small family collection of my sister and me on his shoulders, visiting the zebras at the Detroit Zoo. I love this photograph. Riding his shoulders is also the best vantage point for watching the annual Hudson’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. His height lets me soar over the other onlookers, and his expansive shoulders and hands warm my legs and feet. His enormity can also terrify because when this giant loses his temper, he is like another tornado from which we cannot hide.

He backs down the driveway, swerves around the small island in front of our house, and heads toward Detroit.

Driving in the car with Dad, I look straight ahead or out my window, and try not to wince or make funny sounds as he bounds through the streets as if they are his own personal highways. Making a left turn is a game of chicken. For the passenger sitting closest to the oncoming car, it is a terrifying death sport.

“So, what’s happening, son?”

“School’s out in two weeks,” I say.

“Looking forward to summer?”

“Sort of,” I say. I like school more than summer vacation. It’s more fun than being at home.

“Where we going tonight?” I ask.

“Let’s see here,” he says, looking down and taking out of his large brown folder a white summons that is attached to a legal complaint. I shouldn’t have asked. He pays more attention to the paper than the road.

“We need to get this guy. I’ve had no luck. He’s never home when I show up.”

“What’s the deal?” I ask.

“It says here he owes a year of child support. Here, take a look at the complaint.”

I like reading the complaints.

“It says this guy left town for a year and tried to pass for dead,” I say.

“A man who treats his children like that should be in jail,” he says.

“Well, I guess they found him,” I say.

“And now we’re gonna get him.”

We’re driving on Eight Mile Road, the dividing line between Detroit and the suburbs. The businesses change as we move east through the city. Dress shops and cleaners give way to boarded-up storefronts.

“So, what’s happening, son?” Dad asks.

He already asked that question. But he doesn’t remember. “School’s out in two weeks,” I say.

“What are you doing this summer?”

Same question he just asked. “Going to day camp with Bruce, and we’re playing T-ball,” I say.

“I loved going to B’nai B’rith camp when I was a kid,” he says.

A guy pulls into our lane, cutting off Dad.

“What the fuck?” He steps on the gas pedal and swerves into the lane next to the other car. “Roll down your window,” he says to me.

“What?” I can hear him, but I don’t want to roll down my window.

“Roll down your window,” he says. I do what I am told.

“Hey! Asshole! Learn how to drive,” shouts Dad.

“Kiss my ass,” says the other driver as he gives Dad the finger. He roars away. I can see Dad revving up, about to start chasing him, but then he changes his mind and slows down.

“Sorry about that,” he says.

Some silence.

The neighborhood changes again. It becomes middle class, but there are no bagel factories or kosher delicatessens, just lots of liquor stores and churches. This is the East Side, which is 100 percent gentile, while we are from the West Side, which is more Jewish. We arrive at a white brick ranch house with a bow window in the front. The grass is unmown and has a lot of dandelions coming up, kind of like our house. There are no bushes or flowers around the edges. All the windows are covered with bedsheets of different colors and patterns. Dad parks on the street in front, takes out the paper, and opens his door.

“Stay put, son, I’ll be right back.”

I watch him walk toward the front door, the summons in his back pocket. Some process servers carry handguns, but Dad doesn’t believe in guns. I’m not even allowed to play with toy guns. He doesn’t need one though. He walks fearlessly through life. He is a Jewish Paul Bunyan, in search of deadbeat dads, prospective divorcees, and delinquent mortgage holders—the kind of people who don’t want to see a giant walking up their driveway with a legal-size paper in his hand. He reaches the door and rings the bell. Stands there. No answer. He knocks on the door. Hard. No answer. He peers in the living room window. No luck. He returns to the door, banging his hand over and over. I start to worry. Why isn’t he giving up? He starts banging on the glass of the window, as if he might break it. Finally, the door opens a crack. He is talking to someone, a woman. She is wearing a long yellow T-shirt like a dress and looks like he woke her up. She is shaking her head no, but he won’t leave. A man comes around the side of the house—he is short and pudgy. He is wearing a black T-shirt and jeans. His belly hangs over his waistband. Dad sees him. The man starts running a little. Dad paces after him. Though Dad doesn’t run, his legs are very long, and he quickly catches up with the guy and puts his hand on his shoulder to stop him. He starts talking to the guy and I roll my window down a little so I can hear what they are saying.

“Sorry, that’s not me,” says the man.

“I think it is,” says Dad. “I have your photo.”

A man from the house next door opens his door and comes out to his porch.

“Hey, leave him alone,” says the neighbor.

“Is this your next-door neighbor, Bill McBride?” says Dad.

“None of your business,” says the neighbor.

The man tries to walk away. Dad grabs him by the arm.

“That’s assault,” says the man. He doesn’t put up a fight with this process server who stands many inches over his head.

Dad tucks the summons under the man’s shirt. “Mr. McBride, my name is Mark Seller. I’ve been appointed by the court to serve you this summons. Please read it carefully and show up on your appointed court date.”

Editorial Reviews

03/03/2025

Tony Award winner Seller traces his path from oddball “theater kid” to Broadway producer in his candid and affectionate debut. Seller recounts his small-town Michigan childhood spent clashing with his hotheaded father—whom he later learned was not his biological dad—and escaping into theater, which filled him “with purpose for the first time.” A later stint as a drama counselor sparked his desire to be a producer. He moved to New York City in 1986, where he parlayed a job as a booking agent into launching his own agency with Kevin McCollum. The two would go on to produce such hits as Rent (which Seller helped shepherd from messy early workshops to cultural phenomenon), Avenue Q, and In the Heights. Throughout, Seller provides colorful, behind-the-scenes peeks into the challenges and joys of producing a musical. Especially memorable are his accounts of helping Avenue Q surmount the “puppet prejudice” that initially prevented it from taking off, and witnessing Rent’s emotional impact on audiences. Unfortunately, the narrative wobbles in its final third, which speeds through more than 20 years of Seller’s prolific career. Still, theater buffs would do well to check this out. (May)

Publishers Weekly

"It’s hard to beat Moss Hart’s Act One for best Broadway memoir, but Jeffrey Seller’s Theater Kid is very much in the running...like Hart’s classic, Seller’s book ends on a high note."—AirMail

"Art imitates life in this peek behind the curtain from the award-winning producer of 'Hamilton' and 'Rent.' After an early life marred by poverty and trauma, Seller helped define the modern age of Broadway with shows about rebels, strivers and outsiders much like himself."—New York Times Book Review

"[A] candid and affectionate debut...Seller provides colorful, behind-the-scenes peeks into the challenges and joys of producing a musical...theater buffs would do well to check this out."—Publishers Weekly

"In this candid and engaging memoir, he blends his personal and professional stories to deftly capture his childhood dreams and challenges and his eventual journey to a successful career on Broadway. As an adopted child of a dysfunctional family coming to terms with his sexuality and living on the wrong side of town, musical theater is his saving grace. An entertaining and heartfelt look at what it takes to find your true self and not only survive but thrive amidst the neon lights on Broadway."—Booklist

"Seller is an engaging storyteller and as passionate about directing summer camp theater as he is about producing award-winning Broadway shows. Highly recommended."—Library Journal (Starred Review)

"[Sellers] writes Theater Kid with the vividness of a graphic novel, the immediacy of a play, the intensity of a big-screen movie. Candid, sometimes explicit about his sexual awakening, fearless about revealing his family's chaos and conflicts and yet filled with love for even his volatile father, Theater Kid reads like the autobiography of someone who has lived with hard truths and made peace with them through his artistry."—Detroit Free Press

“...A must-read for grown-up theater kids."—New York Theater blog

"Lightening struck twice for theater producer Jeffrey Seller, whose creative eye and business acumen are behind two of the most successful musicals of all time: Rent and Hamilton. In his touching memoir, Theater Kid, Seller gets real about growing up outside of Detroit, coming to terms with his sexuality, living through the height of the AIDS crisis, and his rocky rise to fame in the business of Broadway."—Queerty


“In this searing and inspiring memoir, Jeffrey Seller writes the book he wishes he’d had as a kid; about a wildly brilliant, closeted young man from tough circumstances in Detroit who finds his way into the wilds of New York and helps develop and support some of the most innovative musical theater of the twentieth and twenty-first century. It belongs on your shelf next to Act One by Moss Hart—if you can manage to put it down; I certainly couldn’t.”—Lin-Manuel Miranda

“I loved reading the wonderful, inspiring adventures of Jeffrey Seller’s life and career. If you feel like an outsider from the poorest part of town, take heart, your dreams can come true.”—Bernadette Peters

“One of the great American coming-of-age stories, Theater Kid exhilarates and transports. The family Jeffrey Seller portrays here is as unique and indelible as any in American literature. Courageous, honest, and compulsively readable, this book will join the very short shelf of indispensable books on the American stage.”—Oskar Eustis, artistic director, The Public Theater

From the Publisher

★ 03/28/2025

Theatrical producer Seller pens a captivating memoir about his life and career. Raised in the poverty-stricken suburb of Detroit known as Cardboard Village, Jeffrey is the adopted Jewish son of Caroline and Mark Seller and felt out of place as the only blonde-haired, blue-eyed boy in his family who loved theater. When Seller was nine, a motorcycle accident left his father brain damaged and emotionally unstable but still able to take his son to auditions and performances. Seller candidly describes his dysfunctional family, his teenage sexual awakening, and relationships with his best friend Andrew and other men in New York City during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s. Post-college jobs in publicity and a booking office led to a business partnership with co-producer Kevin McCullum. Theater buffs will enjoy Seller's behind-the-scenes accounts of the business, especially producing the Tony Award-winning musicals Rent (whose writer Jonathan Larson died the night before its off-Broadway premiere), Avenue Q, In the Heights, and Hamilton (Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote "The Room Where It Happens" on Seller's front porch). VERDICT Seller is an engaging storyteller and as passionate about directing summer camp theater as he is about producing award-winning Broadway shows. Highly recommended.—Denise Miller

Library Journal