Theater Kid by Jeffrey Seller

 

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

On Sale Date: May 6, 2025

Pages: 368

I reviewed a digital review copy from the publisher.

Jeffrey Seller is the producer of many successfull Broadway musicals; Rent, Avenue Q, In The Heights! and Hamilton. How he became a Broadway producer, he describes in this memoir. His memoir is not only about his succes on Broadway, but also about his youth. He grew up in the Oak Park neighborhood of Detroit, which was also know as Cardboard Village back in the 1960s/70s. Cardboard Village was characterized by cheaply constructed homes that felt like "cardboard" to him. His parents, who adopted him as a baby, had problems with each other, and where in and out of divorces that many times did not go trough over and over again. His mom was hardworking and took care of the family, while his father was irresponsibe and overspending and cared mostly about himself. He joins a youth theatre group which starts his love for theater, later on starts making musicals at summer theater camps, and later on moves to New York where he starts working at for Broadway theater producers Fran and Barry Weissler. On the day that he is fired there, he is called back by Jonathan Larson who wants him to produce his new musical  at the New York Theater Workshop; Rent. This is the start for Jeffrey as a Broadway producer, who also wins  several Tony awards for his musicals. But it also contains a deep tragedy because Jonathan Larson sad passing of a heart aneurism just after the first preview perfomance of Rent.

This is a book for everyone who loves Broadway musicals, and/or also now the backstory of musicals like Rent. Jeffrey Seller has a very vivid and fun way of writing, and seems to remind every detail of things that happened decades ago ( I truly wonder how he reminded all the specific conversations with people, for example). I found it interesting and entertaining to read Jeffrey's road from a troubled youth to an award winning Broadway producer. This road was full of bumps, and learning how to survive in New York on you own, and in the world of musical theater and it also was about Jeffrey finding out who he was. There is one explicit sauna scene though that did not add anything to the story and you might wonder if this scene was more in place in his personal diary then in this book or why an editor did not clean this up or added a littlebit of a warning that this might be not everyone's cup of tea. Besides that, this is a book not to miss for every musical theater lover.