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. Seller 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.
His forthcoming memoir, Theater Kid, is a coming-of-age tale of Seller’s journey. Before producing the musical hits of today, he 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. Seller shares how he forged his voice through musical theater and moved to New York, determined to shed his past, and make a name for himself on Broadway.
Seller is the co-creator of the lottery ticket system on Broadway. As the price of tickets skyrocketed through the 1990’s, Seller and his business partner Kevin McCollum hatched an idea to sell the first two rows at Rent for $20 on a first-come first-serve basis. Their motive was to keep theater accessible for everybody—young people, artists, and the everyday people for whom Broadway shows had become prohibitively expensive. Their “first two rows” became so popular that people began sleeping on the street outside the theater to get a spot at the front of the line, so Seller and McCollum created the lottery system to expand access again.
In his public appearances, Seller passionately describes his coming-of-age story and his particular journey realizing his American Dream. He speaks eloquently on how the arts can impact lives. He also pulls back the curtain and shares behind the scenes stories from his experience as a producer who was in “the room where it happens.”
Seller earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan and currently lives in New York City.
Raves and Reviews
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
In the Media
“Hamilton Producer Jeffrey Seller to Release Memoir in 2025”
October 23, 2024
“Exclusive: Tony Award-winning producer Jeffrey Seller to release memoir”
October 23, 2024
“How Hamilton stayed alive during the pandemic: An interview with producer Jeffrey Seller”
August 11, 2021
“U-M alum and Hamilton producer Jeffrey Seller discusses Broadway journey”
September 23, 2018
“The C.E.O. of ‘Hamilton’ Inc.”
April 5, 2016
