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[0:00] Jeffrey Seller: Hello, I'm Jeffrey Seller, and I welcome you to The Theatre Podcast with Alan Seales.

[0:30] Alan Seales: My name is Jeffrey Seller, and I'm your host, Alan Seales, and I'm here to talk with you today about a man who's redefined access with that now-famous ticket lottery, and he's even helped Broadway embrace storytelling in ways that were once unimaginable. His new memoir that just came out, it's called Theater Kid, and it goes into his story about how a young dreamer from what was nicknamed Cardboard Village, because it was so poor that basically that's what the walls were made out of, in Oak Park, Michigan, and how he rose to be one of the most influential producers in theater history. I mean, this is a story of grit and heart and relentless belief in the power of musicals. This guy went and just begged Jonathan Larson to produce his musical, which turned into Tick Tick Boom, and then, of course, they produced Rent, and my gosh. So as always, find me online on social media. You can watch the video version of this podcast on Patreon or Spotify, and now, everybody, please enjoy this episode with producer extraordinaire Jeffrey Seller. Here you go. One, two, three.

[1:58] Alan Seales: Today we're joined by a four-time Tony Award-winning producer whose name is behind some of the most culture-shifting musicals of our generation. From Rent to Avenue Q, In the Heights to Hamilton, his work has redefined what Broadway can be. He's the man who helped usher in a new era of storytelling, broke the mold with lottery ticket access, and continues to champion bold new voices on stage. I've respected this guy for so long. I'm so happy to have him with me here in the WelcomeToTimeSquare.com studio. His new memoir, Theater Kid, takes us back to where it all began and reveals just how far one kid from Oak Park, Michigan, can go. Jeffrey Seller, welcome to the theater podcast.

[2:36] Jeffrey Seller: Thank you, Alan. It's really great to be here in the middle of Times Square, a place I have been working since 1986.

[2:43] Alan Seales: Really?

[2:44] Jeffrey Seller: Well, okay, let's go back to the beginning, then, and we're here to talk about your book, Theater Kid, and it's a memoir of ... I mean, literally, it's like where you've been and where you're going is the whole theme of this podcast, and you wrote a whole book about it. So when I was reading your book, it was fascinating to me, and there are so many stories I can't wait to dive into, but tell the origin story.

[3:08] Jeffrey Seller: Well, sitting here in Times Square is so amazing because we're in 1501 Broadway. My office is in 1501 Broadway. For about four years, I had an office at 1515 Broadway, which is right next door, and for 20 years, I was at 145 West 45th Street, which is where the Museum of Broadway is, and then those first three years at the Weissler office, I was at 165 West 46th Street. You can see all four buildings I've ever worked on on Broadway from where we're sitting right now, and that's kind of moving to me, but of course, that's not where it starts. It starts with Cardboard Village.

[3:45] Alan Seales: Mm-hmm, Oak Park.

[3:47] Jeffrey Seller: It starts in Oak Park, Michigan, where my family was the unique Jewish family that was downwardly mobile at a time in the 1970s when most other families, Jewish or otherwise, were upwardly mobile, and we had to keep moving, and eventually, we had to move to the poorest neighborhood in Oak Park that the kids called Cardboard Village because the houses were made of the tar shingles that are usually on the roof, but in our neighborhood, they were on the sides, and the houses were like 800-square-foot tar shingled buildings built on a concrete slab. They were cheap.

[4:35] Alan Seales: And there's no basement.

[4:36] Jeffrey Seller: There was no basement. There was nowhere to hide from tornadoes, the famous Midwest tornadoes.

[4:42] Alan Seales: Yeah.

[4:45] Jeffrey Seller: Even today, I'm like, how does a kid get from Cardboard Village to Broadway, and that's why I wrote the book, to figure it out.

[4:52] Alan Seales: You wrote the book, to figure it out. Okay, so at this point in your life, you're a seasoned individual. You've been around for a while. You're saying you've been in Times Square for decades now, but why write the book, in order to figure it out? You didn't want to just go on an ayahuasca retreat and meditate for a little bit?

[5:09] Jeffrey Seller: Yeah, I'm not much into drugs, and I'm not much into God. I mean, I'm a Jewish atheist, and I'm adopted, and so I think I was beset with a series of challenges or variables in which existential – I was going to have to figure out my own existential dilemma, which is, why am I here, and how did I get here? How does an adoptee make sense of their life when they don't know where they come from? How does a gay kid make sense of his life? How does a poor Jewish kid make sense of his life? For me, that was to write a book, and I didn't write it with a contract. I wrote it for myself. I had no idea what would happen. I just thought, I'm going to start writing, and I wrote this book, and I wrote it without regard to outcomes.

[6:19] Alan Seales: You wrote it for you, for your discovery.

[6:19] Jeffrey Seller: I wrote it to figure out, why am I here, and what is the meaning of my 60 years on this earth so far? I can't even believe I'm saying 60 years. It's still surreal, but that's what I got. I'm 60 years old.

[6:33] Alan Seales: Would you call it a successful 60 years?

[6:36] Jeffrey Seller: I mean, you have changed the landscape of Broadway, full stop.

[6:41] Jeffrey Seller: Thank you. Yes. I mean, I'm not going to be coy. Yes, it's obviously been a successful 60 years, but my life is unlikely.

[6:53] Alan Seales: Tell me more.

[6:54] Jeffrey Seller: My birth mother could have had an abortion. I could have wound up with a different family. It was an unlikely outcome that a kid who lives in Cardboard Village gets to New York and produces Rent. I should have become a lawyer or a journalist or a high school teacher. I would have been a really good high school teacher. That was the likely outcome. I'm always inspired by historians and by Hamilton because, of course, the United States of America is unlikely. Alexander Hamilton's outcome was unlikely, but my book is about my particular unlikely trajectory.

[7:36] Jeffrey Seller: After I wrote it for me, I realized I'm writing this for theater kids everywhere. I'm writing this for the kid in Bloomington, Indiana, for the kid in Louisville, Kentucky, for the kid outside London who loves theater, who is asking, how can I make a difference in this world, and who often may also be feeling like an outsider, like they don't fit in. I like to think I wrote this for everybody who feels out and is trying to figure out a way to feel in because I felt out so much.

[8:19] Alan Seales: It makes sense for all the reasons you stated why you felt like an outsider, but what is it about theater? What was it about stage and production at that time that drew you in?

[8:32] Jeffrey Seller: That's such a hard question, I think, for all of us because it's, is it in our DNA? Is it fate? What is it? All I can say is this is what happened. I have two strong memories of seeing theater, both children's shows. I saw a bunch of high school kids at Oak Park High School make a brand new musical, a rock musical from Rumpelstiltskin called Rump.

[9:04] Alan Seales: All right.

[9:06] Jeffrey Seller: And I can still remember the melody of the title song. Everybody do the rump, rump, rump. Everybody do the rump, rump, rump. That was so darn cool. I was like, I want to be part of that. And then I have an equally strong memory of seeing our Temple Israel Purim plays in which they would juxtapose Purim against a movie or a Broadway musical or something. And I remember going to the Purim play, and this was being performed by fourth, fifth, and sixth graders, and just going, that looks so fun. How do they learn all those lines?

[9:49] Alan Seales: That's what my kids say to me, too. They're like, how does everyone remember all that?

[9:53] Jeffrey Seller: I couldn't figure it out. So when I was in fourth grade and they announced in January that there were going to be auditions for the Purim play, I just said to my dad, will you take me to auditions? I guess I wanted to be part of it. And he said, get in the car. And I went and auditioned. I didn't know how to read lines with feelings. So I got in the chorus. And that year, what they did is they did this mashup of the story of Purim, which for those listeners who don't know it, it's the story of Queen Esther, who's a hero from the Old Testament. And Queen Esther saves the Jews from the murderous, violent plans of Haman to kill them all. Haman is the villain. And we do that play every year in the same way Christians do the nativity pageant every year. And I go, I'm in it. I'm in the chorus. But that year, they juxtaposed Purim and Queen Esther against South Pacific. So Queen Esther is singing to King Ahasuerus. I'm going to wash that man right out of my hair. And then the sailors, I was a sailor, I guess they thought there's nothing like a day maybe to rescape for fourth graders. So we sang from HMS Pinafore, we sail the ocean blue and our saucy ships of beauty. So I'm in the first play I've ever been in, and it is a mashup of Rodgers and Hammerstein, Gilbert and Sullivan, and the Old Testament, which we know to be very fertile territory for new musicals. Thank you, Andrew Lloyd Webber.

[11:34] Alan Seales: And who wouldn't be hooked by that experience?

[11:39] Jeffrey Seller: Yes. Wow. And then fast forward, you're following this path. And at some point, having to decide between what day job to have if you want to be a performer, if you want to get into producing, you knew you wanted to make a difference, as you were saying.

[11:57] Jeffrey Seller: I became a big picture guy and aware of it very early. So if I could like make three jumps, I'm in the Purim play. Next thing, I write a play. It stars my two best friends and me, and we take all these adventures through this perilous territory that's filled with danger and life-threatening problems, and Peter Pan saves us and flies us home. And after I write a play, then I am in community theater plays and in youth theater in seventh, eighth grade, and there is this moment in the eighth grade where I am in a play. I'm the jack in the box in a play called Popcorn Pete. It's called The Adventures of Popcorn Pete, and I make three observations as I'm in this play at age 13. One, The Adventures of Popcorn Pete is a stupid title. Two, it's not very good. Not enough conflict and danger and jeopardy transpires over the course of the 50 minutes of this play.

[13:06] Alan Seales: You're thinking about this during the play.

[13:09] Jeffrey Seller: I am thinking about this every day. I'm thinking about this on the toilet. I'm thinking about this at meals. I'd like to think I was in the moment when I was the jack in the box, but I'm thinking about it as I'm watching the meager audiences show up. So I'm like, okay, bad title, bad play, meager audience, and I say, who gets to pick the play? And they say, well, that's the play reading committee. And I say, I want to be on the play reading committee. How many kids who are 13, 14 want to sit around on the weekend and read plays? Not many, as you and I know. I now am reading plays at age 14, and then I'm typing the press releases and selling program ads to the local merchants and designing, because I could do a little bit of calligraphy, and designing the posters. So by ninth grade, I am marketing, raising money, picking plays. I'm a producer, and I don't even really know what that word means. And of course, I still haven't started puberty, and I can't drive.

[14:17] Alan Seales: Did your parents and your family support all of this? Or were they like, just let him do his own thing, get him out of the house?

[14:23] Jeffrey Seller: Here was what was remarkable. My family was chaotic. My family, as I said earlier, was poor. My father was a failure in many ways as a provider. My mother had to work as a pharmacy technician clerk for $5 an hour so she could get our health insurance. My parents fought all the time. I had a baby brother who was six months old, and someone had to take care of him. Yet through all of that chaos, anytime I said to my dad, can you take me to this audition? Will you take me to this rehearsal? You know what he said? Get in the car. They always said yes.

[15:18] Alan Seales: That's really beautiful. It says a lot about them at the core of realizing that that's who you are, or you were at that time, and that's what you needed to be a whole person.

[15:30] Jeffrey Seller: They affirmed me in the most beautiful, loving ways.

[15:44] Jeffrey Seller: When I was in sixth grade, we had music class, but there was also a boy's choir, and it would meet at 7:30 in the morning. I was able to get my best friend, Bruce Rosen, a total jock. He was involved with baseball, football, hockey, all of that, but he would go with me. We were in the boy's choir, and that's where I learned Get Me to the Church on Time by Lerner and Lowe. That's where we sang There's Nothing Like a Dame. Then she would coach us for the Winter Pops concert, and they would pick seven talent acts to go along with all of the choral numbers. I signed up to do an act to audition with my best friend, Bruce. Of course, I loved this number I used to see on the Brady Bunch called Together Wherever We Go. I didn't even know there was a show called Gypsy, by the way. I just knew that was the song that Carol Brady and Marsha Brady did at the Brady Bunch talent show. Bruce and I are doing this, and the great Miss Shively is coaching us. Then we audition, and we get in, and we get to do our act in the great Pops concert, A Kaleidoscope of Color and Sound, January 1976. I still have the program. While we're doing that, Miss Shively tells me that she's in a musical of Oliver at a place called Stagecrafters, and she's the flower seller singing Who Will Buy This Wonderful Morning. I'm like, so there's kids? It's Oliver? Is there a kid playing Oliver? She's like, yeah, he's a regular kid. I said, how old is he? She's like, your age. I'm like, why aren't I playing Oliver? I want to play Oliver. Then the next spring, while we're working on our Bicentennial concert, she tells me that she's the music director for this musical that I learned about called Gypsy. I'm not in it or anything, but I learned that she's the music director. I said to myself, well, I want to go join Stagecrafters. Then she says to me, well, you know what? We're going to do a 7th, 8th grade production of Oliver at the middle school next year. All I looked forward to in the summer in between 6th and 7th grade was that we would do Oliver, and she said, you would be a good artful dodger. When I came back for 7th grade, she was gone. She had moved. We never did Oliver, but I remembered Stagecrafters. I picked up the phone, and I called, and I asked if they were having auditions. They said yes. My dad said, get in the car. I went and auditioned for this cheesy melodrama called Speaking of Murder. I wound up one of the lead kid in this adult play I called Speaking of Murder. So Ms. Shively gave me that gift in the 6th grade that I have been deeply, deeply thankful for ever since.

[18:46] Alan Seales: Were you ever able to connect with her again or reach out and just give like a-

[18:49] Jeffrey Seller: I've not been able to find her. I've not been able to find her over all these years.

[19:03] Alan Seales: Oh my goodness. To know what she has had a hand in creating and motivating you to create, my god.

[19:11] Jeffrey Seller: It was certainly one of the most seminal moments of my life when she told me about Stagecrafters, and I picked up the phone and called them.

[19:12] Alan Seales: So this was in Oak Park. Do you remember her first name? Maybe we can put the call out.

[19:17] Jeffrey Seller: Of course, I remember. Her name was Peggy Shively.

[19:20] Alan Seales: Peggy Shively from Oak Park.

[19:22] Jeffrey Seller: Well, she wasn't from Oak Park. I think she probably lived in Troy or something, but yeah, Southeast Michigan. She was a teacher at Oak Park at Frost Middle School at Oak Park, Michigan.

[19:31] Alan Seales: Peggy, email into the podcast. We want to get you connected with Jeffrey because, good god, you've helped create some of the biggest productions that we've seen.

[19:41] Jeffrey Seller: And then-

[19:42] Alan Seales: Don't go anywhere. We'll be right back after this break.

[19:47] Alan Seales: Welcome back to the episode.

[19:49] Alan Seales: Okay. At some point, you're doing all this, going through high school, and then you're like, okay, I got to go to New York because New York is logically the next place for me to live.

[19:58] Jeffrey Seller: It's the only place to go. I mean, we could jump forward. So now I'm at University of Michigan. My best friend is Andrew Lippa. I say to Andrew at some point, you like musicals. You know how to play piano. You should start writing musicals. So Andrew and I start writing a musical, and I'm a drama teacher for campers at Camp Tamarack in Southeast Michigan, which is the Jewish Federation camp, and I'm directing shows. And then I'm directing Greece for Musket at Michigan, and I'm directing Anything Goes for Ann Arbor Civic Theater, and I'm doing children's theater. So I'm doing a ton of theater. I'm also writing about theater for the Michigan Daily and the Ann Arbor News. And as I'm at Michigan, somewhere around sophomore year, someone hands me Hal Prince's book, Contradictions, that he wrote in the mid-70s, and of course, I'm a total obsessive about Evita, which I just think is the greatest thing ever, and of course, it's Hal's remarkable production. And as I'm learning about Hal in college, I'm like, oh, I want to be a producer-director. And how the heck am I going to get from Oak Park, Michigan and Ann Arbor to New York? I don't know anybody in New York. One of my roommates, Nancy Hess, is from Sheepshead Bay, but she just grew up in Sheepshead Bay. And I don't know anyone in New York. And I have no money, of course. So how am I going to get from Ann Arbor to New York? You're not going to get a job as a producer. You're not going to get a job as a director. And when I graduate from Michigan, I'm in despair because I'm like, what am I going to do now? How am I going to do it? Take a breath, Jeffrey. As I'm telling you this, I'm starting to feel that anxiety again. But I thought, okay, be logical. You're a good writer. You can write articles. You wrote press releases. You wrote reviews for the Michigan Daily. You wrote features for the Ann Arbor News. Get a job in publicity. So I literally just start writing cover letters to every publicity firm in New York. And by the way, not really theater firms because they were not part of public relations. You have to keep in mind, it's 1986. The Broadway world is very sequestered. There's no playbill.com. There's no real internet yet publicly at that point.

[22:24] Jeffrey Seller: There is no internet. Zero. No, of course not. So how do you even know about it? But anyway, I got my first job at a publicity agency that did some television and did a little bit of theater. They did the PepsiCo Summer Fair Theater Festival up in Purchase, New York. So I got that first job, $14,500. They paid my health insurance and I took home $205 a week. So that's $820 a month. And my rent on Prospect Place in Brooklyn, just on the Prospect Heights side of Flatbush Avenue was $380. So basically, I had $440 a month to live on, which is $100 a week. I had $100 a week. However, subtract out, I had to pay $120 a month for my loans. So I had like $90 a week. And if I was lucky, at the end of the week, I had enough money to go to TKTS and get a half-price ticket to a show and then maybe go to Hamburger Harry's and get a burger because you could eat at Hamburger Harry's probably for about $5. So that's how I get to New York. When people say, how did you do it? You know what the answer is so logical? One rung at a time. Run on a ladder.

[23:55] Alan Seales: I thought you said wrong, which would also make sense.

[23:58] Jeffrey Seller: R-U-N-G, right? You just keep climbing that ladder one rung at a time. And one year later, I got a job working for the Weisslers and started being a booker. And while I'm working for the Weisslers and I'm a booker, I'm doing shows at night with my friends. And that's when, of course, I meet Jonathan Larson.

[24:18] Alan Seales: It was just chance encounter?

[24:23] Jeffrey Seller: Well, yeah. My friend, Beth Emelson, who was Barry's assistant says, I'm going to go see my friend's rock monologue tonight. And I'm looking at a flyer that says, Boho Days is a rock monologue by Jonathan Larson. And I'm like, rock monologue? First of all, I've never seen those two words put next to each other before, rock and monologue. So I'm like, that sounds so cool. And so Beth and I go up to the second floor theater where it's having its first ever performance. And there's a piano on stage, bass, drums, guitar. And out comes this lanky, tall, curly haired guy. And he sits at the piano and attacks. He's ferocious. And he's telling a story, the story of him turning 30 and feeling this clock tick, tick, boom, that he's afraid he's going to explode because he is a 30-year-old composer of rock musicals that nobody wants to produce because he is sick and tired of his job serving brunch on Sundays at the Moondance Diner as a waiter because he is asking himself, do I stay with my girlfriend who I know is not the right person for me, but at least I feel safe? Or do I have the courage to break up? Do I keep writing these rock musicals that nobody wants to produce? Or should I take this job I'm being offered as a copywriter at an advertising agency? And he's telling this story with the most incredible songs that make the hair on my arms stand up, that make me cry, that make me cheer. It was like a cascade of feeling. So anyway, I wrote him a letter. I'm good at letters. I'm kind of shy. I wrote him a letter the next day saying, I want to produce your musicals. Literally just that was it. Well, it was a longer letter. It was a really good letter. I mean, I literally talked about how much I was blown away by Boho Days. I gave him another idea for another new musical. I told him who I was and what I do and said, I realize I'm nobody, but hey, it's hard to get stuff done. So if you ever are interested in talking, give me a call.

[26:47] Alan Seales: Wow. You saw the first ever production of what became Tick Tick Boom, and then are probably, I mean, not probably, definitely the reason Rent exists in its current form and changed the landscape.

[26:59] Jeffrey Seller: Oh, well, I gave Jonathan two big suggestions about Boho Days. One is I said, change the title of Tick Tick Boom, because that's the motif you keep repeating in the show over and over. Two is I said, the opening number Boho Days is no good. So you need to write a new opening number, and he wrote 3090, which is pretty damn great.

[27:25] Alan Seales: And I agree.

[27:26] Jeffrey Seller: And that was all about turning 30 in 1990.

[27:30] Alan Seales: Holy shit, dude.

[27:32] Jeffrey Seller: But then, by the way, I tried to produce Tick Tick Boom in 1990. Actually, it was 91, 92, and I couldn't raise the money. People were like, why should I invest in a musical about a 30-year-old who's upset that he's not successful yet? Like, woe is me.

[27:54] Alan Seales: Which I'm sure the investors were much older than 30.

[27:58] Jeffrey Seller: When you're much older than 30, and you got 30-year-olds complaining that they haven't done anything yet, you're not that sympathetic.

[28:04] Alan Seales: Right, right, right. Well then, so Tick Tick Boom...

[28:09] Jeffrey Seller: But I love that you said that, that, yes, Tick Tick Boom becomes the preparation for Rent. Every theme in Tick Tick Boom, every theme that I said shows up in Rent. Relationship, job, being true to yourself, asking, do I have what it takes to be an artist? Every theme in Tick Tick Boom shows up in Rent.

[28:35] Alan Seales: You've never had any formal playwright story writing training or anything. This is just what you've pulled out of observation and life experience of putting, like, why would I, Jeffrey, want to just watch this? Why do I care about your production, your story?

[28:51] Jeffrey Seller: Well, I want to say two things. One is I only produce what moves me physically, and I hope that if I am moved, if I am thrilled, if I am crying, if I'm inspired, then the audience will be too. I hope that what pleases me will please the audience. I have no idea what will please the audience. I only know what will please me. Then my second answer to that question is that you said, you know, no, of course, I didn't study dramatic criticism, though I studied a lot of theater, but I started reading those plays in eighth grade. I read a lot of plays beginning when I was 14 years old, and you know what? You read a lot of plays, and then you get to 10th grade, and you study O'Neill, which we did, The Hairy Ape, and you study The Glass Menagerie, which we did, and you study Death of a Salesman, which we did all those things in my American Literature II class. We were studying plays. It's one thing, though, to read a good story and then internalize it and say, I like this. This kept me entertained. That story over there, not so much. This one over here, yeah, I'd read it again. Then there's the extra level of understanding why, because you can still enjoy something, and then I'll internalize it and be like, oh, that was cool. I liked how that actor played it, or I like this part or that element of the story. But to come out, and a lot of people will leave something and say like, yeah, it was okay, but they never have the forethought or the—what's the word I'm looking for? The awareness to analyze it and say, what would make it better? What would make me love this? Change from like to love, right? You not only can see that, you can communicate it to the people who can implement it, and then you put it on stage, and everybody loves it. So you're like this magic glue.

[30:59] Jeffrey Seller: I love your summation, and it's a lot harder than that. But yes, I mean, and you're going straight back to me being that jack-in-the-box and popcorn Pete and going, this play isn't good enough. There isn't enough conflict. I'm asking, what is the conflict and the rising tension before anyone has taught me the five-act Shakespeare structure? But by the time I learned that in a theater history class in college, I'm like, oh.

[31:34] Alan Seales: Right, right. Oh, that makes—yeah, that makes sense.

[31:38] Jeffrey Seller: I kind of knew it before I knew it.

[31:40] Alan Seales: Right.

[31:40] Jeffrey Seller: Because I was like, why is this? Where's the conflict? What do we—what is the plot?

[31:47] Alan Seales: So as you said, putting something on stage, if you like it, it's a great story. It's got all these great characters. That's half of it. The other half is getting people to know about it and to put it on stage. So that's the technical part of it. And is that what you learned from the other jobs you had previously, or did you just kind of dive in? Because something I wanted to come back to, where you're like, oh, how did you do it? Yeah, you find the next rung. But when the ladder is not straight, you're jumping all over the place.

[32:19] Jeffrey Seller: Well, of course, the ladder to get Rent from Jonathan's idea to Broadway was anything but straight. It was a series of failures and successes. It was a step forward, maybe two steps back, or two steps forward and one step back. It was a lot of trial and error.

[32:44] Alan Seales: Well, how do you know even to try? Because if you've never done something like—I've always wanted to say, yeah, I'll produce something. I'll put something and I'll make the next Hamilton. I'll make the next Rent, whatever. I just need to find a good story, right? But then there's more productions than we have open theaters here in New York. There's the stigma of opening something. If it doesn't go to Broadway, I'll put in quotes, not good enough. There's all of these business aspects to it. So aside from the story, which you're diving into, you're diving into the story and the people and the creative team, and you believe in it. It makes your hair stand up on your arms, and that's great. But then the business side of it, where do you know where to try to fail?

[33:27] Jeffrey Seller: I think that being a booker at the Weissler office taught me so much about the business. Watching the Weisslers produce Cabaret starring Joel Gray and Topol and Fiddler on the Roof and Macbeth with Christopher Plummer and Glenda Jackson, I watched a lot of production, and I learned everything I could from it. I certainly learned as a booker exactly how the road works and how to tour all over America, which put me in a position to know exactly what to do once Rent exploded on Broadway in terms of our touring. Frankly, Rent winds up touring for about 18 of the next 25 years. Our last tour closed about two years ago. So getting the nuts and bolts of getting a show on, that's the easy part. Discovering a composer, lyricist, book writer, director team who together make something in which the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, that's the miracle. Getting it to Broadway is easy if you've got the miracle.

[34:58] Alan Seales: That's part of why I do the podcast. I want to bring stories to the kid in the Midwest who may not ever make it to Broadway or doesn't think that they can because they're like, oh, I keep failing. I'll never make it. But then you hear amazing people who have done amazing things who started out doing nothing but failing. It just keeps going. I'm sitting here thinking about all this. You said you have to find that miracle, what makes you stand up. When you were contemplating, and you talk about this in the book, contemplating staying as a job at a booker and working where you were working, and then you were on the phone with Jonathan, I think, when you got the call that you got fired as a booker, and then that's what made you jump into full-time producing?

[35:49] Jeffrey Seller: Well, it wasn't that linear. But it is true that if we can go back to a little bit earlier in our interview, I said to you, I wrote this letter to Jonathan saying I want to produce your show. That's a moment in my life. It's the fall of 90. I'm so frustrated. I don't want to be a booker anymore. I really want to be a producer, but there's no way to make a living as a producer. I'm frustrated at my job. I'm not satisfied. I've just broken up from a six-year relationship. I'm lonely. I'm wondering if I'll ever find someone. I have to pay the bills. You are Jonathan Larson. And I'm saying, how is this man telling my story? He's never met me. But in any event, it's the fall of 90. Sorry to bore you with my memory, but it's the day after my birthday. I've just turned 26. The day after my birthday, I'm in the conference room at the Weissler office, and I'm eating my carrots. My boss comes in with an envelope, one of those simple business envelopes in her hand. I see the envelope. I'm like, uh-oh. She says, we have to talk. She says, you don't want this job anymore. You don't really want to be a booker. You want to be a producer. You've got to go off on your own. You're fired. It's time for you to go. I'm like, oh, so shit. And my heart is sinking, and I am immediately sweating and vibrating because I'm like, how am I going to pay my student loans? How am I going to pay my rent? I have no money. What am I going to do? I'm going to be a homeless person. As she's firing me, we used to have these all intercom where they could intercom the whole office because if they can't find you in your office, they're looking for you everywhere. The all intercom goes on, and the receptionist goes, Jeffrey Seller, Jonathan Larson on line three. All I could do was go, oh, my God, and then say, take a message because I can't interrupt the process of getting fired. I say, well, take a message. I get his phone number, and I go home, and I call him, and I tell him what just happened. He says, how are you? I'm like, well, I just got fired. He said, was that a good thing or a bad thing? I said, well, if I believe anything in your play, it's got to be a good thing. That's the beginning of my five and a half year relationship with Jonathan that culminates in Rent.

[38:24] Alan Seales: Wow. I didn't realize that was the first time he had called you.

[38:27] Jeffrey Seller: That's it.

[38:28] Alan Seales: That's insanely cool. Five and a half years, get Rent where it is and where it continues to be. Did you have to convince him at all to work with you, or was this the first conversation?

[38:42] Jeffrey Seller: Nobody wanted to produce his musicals. He was a 30-year-old composer, rock musicals. No. If anybody did, he would have because I was nobody. We won by default.

[39:03] Alan Seales: Right, right, right, right. You've lost your connection with the Weisslers. You're literally like no money. Then what was your next step? What was the next rung you went to?

[39:10] Jeffrey Seller: That's an important lesson for young theater makers. You need a job. After I was fired from the Weisslers, that's when I teamed up with two terrific men, Paul Blake, who was a producer. He ran the St. Louis community. He would produce shows for The Road and Kevin McCollum, who was his assistant or was his executive producer. They wanted a booker because they were making shows that they thought couture. I started working with Paul and Kevin in January of 91. Then ultimately, Kevin bought out Paul. Kevin and I became 50-50 partners. Kevin and I, with his moxie and my expertise in booking, because I didn't like it, but I was really good at it. It stinks when you're in that position. I knew I had to do it because I had to pay that student loan every month. I had to pay that rent. So we started this company called The Booking Office. Within a couple of years, we were making a living. We were not making a killing, but we were making a living. It was while we were running The Booking Office that Jonathan was developing Rent. We were able to help him because we had enough cash in The Booking Office that when Jonathan needed to make a cassette recording of all the songs after the workshop in 94, we could give him that money.

[40:41] Alan Seales: Insane. I feel like we could just deep dive on Rent forever, but I want to keep going because Rent blows up. Things are great. Kevin obviously has turned into a wonderful producer in his own right as well. How do you continue to work together? When does In the Heights come into the picture?

[41:05] Jeffrey Seller: Kevin and I become business partners, friends, brothers, and we do together Rent, De La Guarda, Avenue Q, In the Heights, The West Side Story with Spanish language that Arthur Lawrence directs, other things. We have an amazing 20-year partnership. It was in the end of 2011 that I was now in my mid-late 40s. I was like, I want to ride the bike myself. I don't want to ride in tandem anymore. We'll see what happens. I was like, if I'm going to do it, now's the time because I figured I'm about midway through my career. That's when we both parted. He continued producing. I continued producing. Arguably, it's been better for Broadway because now there's more stuff.

[42:00] Alan Seales: Just an example of how we have to check in with ourselves and honor ourselves and say, where am I? I just decided I want to be the CEO. I want to make the final decisions, and I'm willing to live with the consequences. Positive, negative, hit, flop, success, failure.

[42:29] Jeffrey Seller: That's crazy cool. That is so cool. How do you decide what to work on now? Even then, when you're building on the success of Rent and people at that time were like, this is never going to make it. It's not cool, and then it explodes.

[42:47] Jeffrey Seller: By the way, they said the same thing about Avenue Q and In the Heights.

[42:50] Alan Seales: Yes.

[42:50] Jeffrey Seller: They're never going to make it.

[42:51] Alan Seales: And probably Hamilton too, right?

[42:53] Jeffrey Seller: Less, but I will say all three of those shows, first of all, as we said, Kevin and I got to produce Rent because nobody wanted to. Then Avenue Q, even after we opened off Broadway, they were like, puppets on Broadway? They're out of their minds. They're out of their fucking minds. In the Heights, okay, so they did this show off Broadway. They're only doing 60% business, and they think they're going to do that show on Broadway. They're out of their minds. All three won the Tony.

[43:24] Alan Seales: Right. But what makes you believe in this? Is it literally just you are too stubborn to listen to other people? Are you...

[43:29] Jeffrey Seller: I don't know what they're talking about.

[43:38] Alan Seales: And by the way, I'm not saying I do either, but I'm saying one thing. I listen to myself. And when Kevin and I were standing in the back of the Vineyard Theater and watching those puppets, and watching that audience, we came away along with our partner, Robin Goodman, with a point of view, and that was, these puppets and this show, it has big themes. What am I going to do with my life? This will play on Broadway. And also, we were at the back of the Vineyard Theater and we were going, you know what? Can puppets play on Broadway? Because are you going to be able to see them in the back? And it turns out puppets, the size of our puppets, their heads were almost as big as a human head, but they're all felt, meaning that they're all primary colors. They're all... They're simple. They're easier to read in the back of the balcony than a human face. Their eyes are bigger than yours. Their mouth is bigger than yours.

[44:29] Alan Seales: I'm thinking about the four big ones we keep mentioning, Avenue Q, Rent, Hamilton, and In the Heights. They're all existential, what do I do with my life plays or musicals. And how do we start this conversation? Me saying...

[44:47] Jeffrey Seller: Exactly.

[44:47] Alan Seales: He's like, why did you write a book? Because that's an existential question. What am I doing with my life? I've been asking this my whole life because I don't believe in a reunion in heaven. So if I don't figure it out now, I'm screwed.

[45:02] Jeffrey Seller: So you and Kate Monster...

[45:04] Alan Seales: God is not waiting for me at the gates.

[45:06] Jeffrey Seller: Kate Monster is. Yeah.

[45:08] Alan Seales: God bless her.

[45:10] Jeffrey Seller: That's so cool. I mean, yeah, you listen to yourself, you listen to what speaks to you, and I feel like you're not alone. It's now in your so many years of producing and creating and hearing audience feedback and watching the audience watch your shows. Do you have a sense now that that boy you were when you felt other, when you felt alone is not... It wasn't true. You have a family. You came to the entertainment, the industry and are telling the stories so that everyone who feels alone actually is all together. They're not alone. We're not alone. You're doing this because it speaks to everybody that you wanted to talk to in the Midwest, these kids that feel othered.

[45:55] Jeffrey Seller: Thank you. Because you just nailed it, which is... Guess what? I don't feel like I'm outside anymore.

[46:03] Alan Seales: Good.

[46:04] Jeffrey Seller: I feel like I'm inside. And I have watched how these shows have made so many people feel inside instead of outside. And I think that's the greatest achievement of all.

[46:16] Alan Seales: I binged the Rent album for years. Same thing. Just feeling like an outsider, feeling weird and different. And that show, that music and the story behind the music, it wasn't just the story. It was the actual melodies, the composition, the arrangements spoke to me in a way that no other show ever had before.

[46:43] Jeffrey Seller: Yes.

[46:44] Alan Seales: And I'm going to spoil this for you. At the end of every episode, I ask, if you could only see one show for the rest of your life, what show would you see? And people have asked me every now and then what my answer is, and it's always Rent. Because that was the show that got me to love who I am, where I am in life at that moment, and has put us together right now. So, thank you.

[47:09] Jeffrey Seller: That's very moving to me.

[47:11] Alan Seales: Thank you. Has your choice of what to work with, work on changed now that you don't feel othered anymore? So, do you now look for things that are slightly different, or are you still looking for that kind of existential crisis in the work that you're producing now?

[47:31] Jeffrey Seller: The ability to analyze what I am looking for is based on our ability to look backwards and then find the commonalities between those four shows. And by the way, they all took place in New York. And so, A, we look in retro—I didn't come to New York and go, I want to do musicals about what am I going to do with my life. I didn't know. I just know that's what came to me, because here's a very important distinction. I don't choose. I don't say, okay, we're going to make a musical out of X. I, for the most part, have received ideas from artists who have a musical they want to do. And then I see if they surprise me, inspire me, prick my ear in a whole new way. So, I say, hey, I've never heard it sound like that before. So, in those ways, I follow, because my job is to harness the power of the artist and their ideas.

[48:41] Alan Seales: Ooh, that's heavy. My God, I wish we had another three days to dive into this.

[48:48] Jeffrey Seller: I could talk to you forever. But we are coming up on the end of our time together. So, unfortunately or fortunately, I have to switch over to Plot in 60 Seconds. We've got 60 seconds here on the screen in front of you. Just a fun little game. We like to end on a high note here. So, I have 17, I just added one the other day, 17 popular musicals in front of me. And I'll tell you what show you picked. Great. Three. Three is Company. Go.

[49:21] Jeffrey Seller: Company is about a guy named Bobby who's single, who doesn't know how to forge a relationship with a woman who has many friends, many couple friends, and he loves them all, and they all love him. But here's the deal. All of them have fucked up marriages. So, he's asking himself, why should I go emulate what you do? None of you are happy. Only to discover at the end that it's better to be with someone than not. Because we're all, oh, the greatest song on the show, sorry, grateful. We're sorry that we fight, but we're grateful we're together. Being Alive. Being Alive, I love that. That was on point. Well done. I get an A in musical theater history.

[50:17] Alan Seales: Well done. All right. Three questions I ask everyone to wrap up. The first one is just simply what motivates you?

[50:22] Jeffrey Seller: Making things. I always want to make one more thing.

[50:27] Alan Seales: If you could give advice to your younger self and younger people listening now starting out down a similar path, what would you say?

[50:32] Jeffrey Seller: It's going to be okay. Just take another step. Just put one foot in front of the other. If you're doing yoga, do the next pose. If you're running a marathon, run the next mile. Just keep going.

[50:45] Alan Seales: What is it from Frozen 2? Do the next best thing? The next best step? What is she saying?

[50:51] Jeffrey Seller: I saw Frozen 2, but I can't do that.

[50:51] Alan Seales: Okay. Then the last question, I already told you this was coming. If you could only see one show for the rest of your life, but you can see it as many times as you want, what would you see?

[51:03] Jeffrey Seller: Oh, that's such a hard question. I'm going to have to go with A Chorus Line because that was the first show I ever fell in love with.

[51:08] Alan Seales: Chorus Line is to me what Rent was to you. You know what's interesting? What's the next musical that shows who we are, where we are today in a vernacular that sounds a little bit like today in a contemporary musical, meaning what's the next contemporary musical after A Chorus Line? Rent. There's one exception, which would be Falsettos, but the music wasn't contemporary. But nevertheless, there's a direct line from A Chorus Line to Rent. The Chorus Line was my show and I was in the car with just me and my dog on Saturday night, and I listened to the entire album from beginning to end and cried. Have you ever been able to tell this to Donna McKechnie and Priscilla Lopez, the people who are still so active?

[52:00] Jeffrey Seller: Well, I certainly, as you might remember, Priscilla worked for me when she was the mother in The Heights on Broadway for three years. So I love Priscilla Lopez and how lucky are we that she's still doing shows?

[52:13] Alan Seales: So lucky. And Donna, too. Donna's still in Wicked now, I think.

[52:18] Jeffrey Seller: Maybe, but I never had the pleasure of meeting Donna McKechnie.

[52:21] Alan Seales: But I love Donna McKechnie. Donna McKechnie, I want to be Donna McKechnie.

[52:26] Jeffrey Seller: Can you name that show?

[52:28] Alan Seales: No, I cannot.

[52:29] Jeffrey Seller: Come on!

[52:29] Alan Seales: I cannot. I fail musical theater right now.

[52:33] Jeffrey Seller: I want to be Donna McKechnie. Baby! Maltby and Shire, 1984. I win.

[52:40] Alan Seales: I was three years old. Okay, where can we connect with you online and get your book, Theater Kid?

[52:46] Jeffrey Seller: Oh my gosh, right. So you can get my book if you are in the New York Tri-State area at the Drama Bookshop. But of course, you can get my book at any Barnes & Noble or any of your local bookstores. Always support the local bookstore if you can. And then of course, you can get it at barnesandnoble.com. You can get it at Amazon. You can get anywhere online. You can listen to the audio that has 15 Broadway stars playing all the different parts in it, including Lindsay Mendez and Danny Burstein and Renee Goldsberry and Darren Criss and Chrissy Burr and Annaleigh Ashford and Lin-Manuel Miranda. It's an amazing group. And I'm sure if you go to jeffreyseller.com, you could probably find a link to buy the book. But come on, we all know how to buy books.

[53:33] Alan Seales: Yeah, well, I'll link to it in the show notes as well. So check the show notes for this episode as you are listening. Oh, you can get me on all the socials on thread, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook. Leave a rating and a review wherever you're listening. You can watch this now on Spotify or Patreon. Thanks to Jukebox the Ghost for the intro and outro music. Thanks to welcometotimesquare.com for the use of this lovely studio. And also check them out. And Jeffrey, thank you so much. This has truly been something I've been looking forward to for a long time.

[54:04] Jeffrey Seller: Oh my god, it was so fun. And thank you for hosting me on Broadway. In the Broadways. Take a deep breath, make the world a little colorful.