Power producer of musicals Rent and Hamilton is now telling his own story

NEW YORK – American Broadway producer Jeffrey Seller is, by any measure, enormously successful.

He has produced – always in collaboration with others – about 10 shows that have collectively grossed US$4.74 billion (S$6.1 billion), about one-third of which was profit for producers, investors and others.

His first big hit was Rent (1996) and his most recent, Hamilton (2015). In between were Avenue Q (2003) and In The Heights (2008), but also plenty of others that did not flourish.

For a long time, Seller, now 60 and the winner of four best-musical Tony Awards, had complicated feelings about how he fit in. He was adopted as an infant and grew up in a downwardly mobile and fractious family in a Detroit suburb.

Theatre was where he found pleasure and meaning – a way out and a way up.

Now, he has written a memoir, Theater Kid, published on May 6. It is a coming-of-age and rags-to-riches story that is unsparing in its description of his colourfully challenged and challenging father, unabashed in its description of his sexual awakening, and packed with behind-the-scenes detail, especially about the birth of Rent.

In an interview at his office in the theatre district, Seller spoke about his life, his career and his book. These are edited excerpts from the interview.

You do not need the money or the attention. Why write a memoir?

I wrote it to figure out why I am here. I wrote it to try to figure out how I fit in. And I guess I wrote it as an exercise in squashing all of my shame at being an adopted, gay, Jewish, poor kid and always feeling like an outsider.

What did you learn about yourself?

I think maybe we adoptees are never sure we are going to be okay. There is something so deep about what it means to not know where you come from, and to feel that you have been rejected by the very people who created you. That has affected every part of my life. And I think that through some process of psychoanalysis, therapy and this book, I maybe have come to see that I am okay, and I am going to be okay.

You grew up in a Detroit suburb, among far more affluent families, in a neighbourhood nicknamed Cardboard Village.

I was so ashamed of it that I would experience extreme anxiety if someone asked where I lived. Everybody else was doing a little better every year, including my cousins and my friends. I just remember being so angry, like why can’t we get out of here? And we never did until I produced Rent.

The story of Rent is so complicated because it is this enormous success wrapped up with the enormous tragedy of the death of Jonathan Larson, the show’s composer and author, hours before the first off-Broadway preview.

For many years, I felt guilty. I reap these benefits from Rent, and Jonathan never got to see it. But with the passage of time, my feeling has changed because now I realise that Jonathan changed American musical theatre forever, and all contemporary American musical theatre now stands on his shoulders. Jonathan changed Broadway, and Broadway is better for it.

Your other key creative relationship has been with Hamilton’s creator and star Lin-Manuel Miranda. In the book, you describe wondering if his gift was divine.

I remember two things the first time we did a reading of In The Heights.

The first was the opening number. Every hair on my arm rose because the juxtaposition of this warm rap with this Broadway choral singing was completely new to my ears. And a half-hour later, when this older woman sings about her experience arriving on the shores from Cuba as a little girl and becoming a housekeeper on the Upper East Side, I thought it was one of the most beautiful arias I’d heard in my life.

But I also went, “How does this young man understand the lifeblood of a 70something Cuban woman?” And that’s when I thought for the first time, “Is he channelling God?”

You knew from the beginning that Hamilton would be amazing?

I knew from the beginning that Hamilton was yet another step forward. I did not know from the beginning that it would become a phenomenon. That came with time, and with the audience.

We talked a lot about your successes. You’ve also had failures. How do you handle that?

Failure at making a new musical is crushing to me, and I spend hours, days, weeks, months, years after analysing what went wrong. What could I have done differently?

I was developing The Last Ship (a musical with a score by English singer-musician Sting) at the same time that I was developing Hamilton, and I was a fervent believer in both. And when The Last Ship could not find a Broadway audience, it broke my heart.

I love all of my shows, and all I can do is my best, and know that ultimately I do not control their destiny. What I must do as a producer, though, is accept their fate. And that means making the tough decision to close when you know it is not working.

How are you feeling about the state of Broadway, artistically and financially?

I’m going to equivocate. On a positive level, this year, we are going to do the highest attendance we have had since 2018 to 2019. We have seen the arrival of more than 10 new musicals. Both of those facts are cause for celebration.

But it is getting harder and harder to make money, and I am concerned about if and when the investment money starts drying up. We have not had a megahit since Hamilton, and that is a problem.

What is your advice for someone who wants to be a theatre producer?

Find the next Jonathan Larson. Find the next Lin-Manuel Miranda. Everything else will fall in place if you get the team. Find the artists. NYTIMES