Jeffrey seller produced ‘Hamilton’. Now, in ‘Theater Kid’, he tells his story.

The Broadway producer Jeffrey seller Is to what extent also enormous successful. He has produced around 10 shows (always in collaboration with others) who jointly built up $ 4.74 billion, of which was about a third profit for producers, investors and others.

You have probably heard of several of those shows. His first big hit was’Rent. “His most recent ones:”Hamilton. “In between were”Avenue Q“And”In height‘But also many others who did not flourish.

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

Theater was where he found pleasure and meaning – a way out and a way up. Now he has written a memoir, ‘Theater child“That will be published on 6 May. It is a combination of coming-of-age and rag-to-rich story that does not play in his description of his colorful and challenging father, unabashedly in his description of his sexual awakening and full of behind the scenes details, especially about the birth of” rent “.

In an interview in his office in the Theaterdistrict, the seller spoke about his life, his career and his book. These are edited fragments from the interview.

You don’t need the money or attention. Why write a memoir?

I wrote to find out why I am here. I wrote to try to find out how I fit in. And I think I wrote it as an exercise in packing all my shame because I am an adopted, gay, Jewish, poor child and always felt an outsider.

You have spent a career developing the stories of other people. Did you help you tell your own?

This was an incredible challenge. Instead of criticizing or supporting the writing of someone else, I was the writer, the producer, the theater manager, the director of my own book. So I started coaching myself. I would say, “What is the beginning and the middle and the end of this scene?” “How are you going to make every scene satisfactory, Jeffrey?” And: “Well, this is boring!” “Cut that!” “Can you make this scene funny?” Now I had to be responsible for creating a dramatic arch.

The book is so frank about money and sex and ambition.

Money, sex and ambition is my life! There was no other way! Does the world still need a memoir about Broadway? Not necessary. Does the world still need a memoir about homosexual men who come out? Not necessary. The only “why” that I could imagine is to dig deeper and to be brutally truthful and treat myself like everyone else – shows myself that I am uncertain, shows myself that I am small, also show my ugliness. I only thought I was more truthful and exposing more, I will justify the existence of this book.

You also write about people who are still there – former lovers, former employees, family members. What did you think about telling those stories?

One: Tell the truth. Two: record what happened. Three: Tell it alone whether it has a dramatic goal that the umbrella story serves. But I know you ask: “Well, what about the feelings of the person you are writing about?” And yes, it was in my mind, but I don’t think I revealed anything about someone who was cruel or mean.

Do you have a diary or do you just have a great memory? Your stories are so specific.

I have counted the entire university. I have saved all the letters that I wrote to other people. I have a great memory. And there is one more thing: I had three stories that I wrote in my late 1920s that were very rough designs for what I finally wrote.

What did you learn about yourself?

I think we may not be sure that we are not sure it will be fine. There is something so deep about what it means not to know where you come from and to feel that you were rejected by the people you have made. That has influenced that every part of my life. And I think that a process of psychoanalysis, therapy and this book, maybe I started to see that I am fine, and it will be fine.

You grew up in a suburb of Detroit, among many more prosperous families, in a neighborhood with the nickname cardboard village.

I was so embarrassed that I would experience extreme fear if someone asked me where I lived. Everyone did a little better every year, including my cousins ​​and my friends. I just remember that I was so angry, like why can’t we be gone here? And we never did it until I produced ‘rent’.

As a gay person you came out of the AIDS crisis, because it destroyed the gay community and the theater community.

It braked me physically. I was so afraid of death. I was so afraid of getting sick. I just remember how scared I was when I grabbed the village voice to try to find an apartment share and on the front page there was a big head about how many people had died in St. Vincent’s Hospital that week.

The story of “rent” is so complicated because it is this enormous success that has been completed with the enormous tragedy of Jonathan Larson’s deathThe composer and author of the show, hours before the first from Broadway Preview.

For years I felt guilty. I harvest these benefits of “rent” and Jonathan has never seen it. But with the passage of time my feeling has changed, because I now realize that Jonathan has changed the American music theater forever, and all contemporary American music theater is now on his shoulders. Jonathan changed Broadway and Broadway is better for it.

Your other important creative relationship was with Lin-Manuel Miranda. In the book you describe to wonder if his gift was divine.

I remember two things the first time we have ever read ‘in the heights’. The first was the opening number. Every hair on my arm came on, because the combination of this warm rap with this Broadway choir singing was completely new to my ears. And half an hour later, when this older woman gets up and sings her experience on the banks of Cuba as a little girl and a housekeeper became on the Upper East Side, I thought it was one of the most beautiful arias I had ever heard in my life. But I also went: “How does this young man understand the lifeline of a 70-year-old Cuban woman?” And then I thought for the first time, “Can he channel God?” The God I don’t believe in.

You knew from the start that “Hamilton” would be great?

I Knowed from the start that “Hamilton” was another step forward. I didn’t know from the start that it would be a phenomenon. That came with time, and with the public.

“Hamilton” will be 10 this year. How are you?

Nowadays, five companies in the whole world have been arranged. “Hamilton” is doing great.

A way you celebrate is with the return of Leslie Odom Jr. As Aaron Burr. How did that come about and how did it influence the sale?

Leslie and I started talking about this idea a few months ago. And I think he has a great opportunity to ask: “How does this feel 10 years later?” I can’t wait to see him do it again. And the sale is great.

We have spoken a lot about your successes. You have also had failures. How do you deal with that?

Failure when making a new musical is over and over for me and I bring hours, days, weeks, months, years after, analyze what went wrong. What could I have done differently? I was developed “The last ship” [a musical with a score by Sting] At the same time that I developed ‘Hamilton’, I was in both avid believers. And when “the last ship” couldn’t find a broadway audienceIt broke my heart. I love all my shows, and everything I can do is my best, and know that in the end I do not manage their destination. What I have to do as a producer is to accept their fate. And that means taking the difficult decision to close if you know it doesn’t work.

You write that the task of a producer is to show the first 50,000 people a show, and then lives or dies about mouth -mouth advertising. Do you really believe that?

Yes, I really do that. You won them, or you didn’t.

You also write that it is important to read the audience. How do you do that?

Nowadays it is becoming more difficult because the audience becomes really noisy, even in previews. I think we now read the audience in two ways. How do they respond that night? And what happens at the checkout the next day? A standing ovation is not a good mouth -to -mouth advertising. The next day selling more tickets at the cash register is a good mouth -tone advertising.

In 2016 you presented the cast of “Hamilton” Indicate a challenge for Vice-President-Elect Mike Pencewho was in the audience. Why?

I felt that we were not in normal political times and that it was our right to express our fears, fears and hope to this special opportunity we had to be in the room with the new vice-president-elect of the United States. And that night it was one of the first protests of the new regime, and I am proud of that. And of course everything we were worried about came.

Now you have “Hamilton” pulled from the Kennedy Center.

When we played the Kennedy Center for the first time, it was during the first Trump administration. And we had a great engagement there. But after Trump had politized the organization, took over as the chairman, installed one of his political lakeien and then fired every democratic member of the board, we will not participate and we will not allow them to use the win from our show to support their agenda.

How do you feel about the state of Broadway, artistic and financially?

I’m going to be ambiguity. At a positive level we will do the highest presence we have had since ’18 -’19 this year. We have seen the arrival of more than 10 new musicals. Both facts are reason for celebration. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to make money, and I am worried about whether and when the [investment] Money starts to dry up. We haven’t had a megahit since “Hamilton”, and that is a problem.

What is your advice for someone who wants to become a theater producer?

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