Jeffrey Seller writes about his troubled childhood. He’s adopted by a dysfunctional couple. Seller loves acting and theater but finds little support at home. Fortunately a teacher helps Seller and his persistence leads to success.

But the struggle to advance in the Broadway world nearly breaks Seller. He works for years in an agency that books touring companies all across the country. While Seller chafes at this low-level job, he’s learning how the Broadway business works and he makes plenty of contacts that will pay off later.

My favorite chapters tell the story of our Rent came about. The iconic musical almost didn’t happen. Seller’s role in helping Jonathan Larson, the show’s creator, overcome all the problems with bringing a musical to Broadway showed how hard creative projects like this really are to bring about.

“The new American play is an endangered species… Five new plays opened on Broadway last year. Five. Forty years ago, thirty new plays opened. Sixty years ago, over sixty new plays opened. We are losing Broadway as a home for plays. And without New American plays, there is no American theater.” Those words by playwright Terrence McNally in the early 1990s described the dire state of theater in America. As bleak as this picture was, Jeffrey Seller and a group of Broadway insiders managed to produce Rent, Avenue Q, In the Heights, and Hamilton.

This tale of an unlikely rise to the top of Broadway is both inspiring and compelling. GRADE: A

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Act One

The Accident — 3

Adventureland — 17

Camping — 21

Mom and Dad — 35

Miss Shively — 41

Speaking of Murder — 47

A Baby and a Bar Mitzvah — 55

Plays, Musicals, and a Talk With Dad — 63

“Gower Champion Died Today” — 78

Old Men and Clowns — 84

Go Blue! — 91

“And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” — 95

Freshman Fables — 101

Scenes From a Sophomore Year — 115

628 Packard Street — 131

People Express: One-way Ticket to NYC! — 142

Act Two

“The One Place on Earth I Want to Be.” — 153

Fran and Barry and Susan — 166

Our First New Musical — 174

Three Meetings That Change My Life — 186

The Booking Office — 201

Booking Wars — 212

The Real Live Brady Bunch — 226

Rent Part I: the Reading and Workshop — 233

Rent Part II: Rehearsals — 251

Rent Part III: Performances — 262

Rent Part IV: Broadway — 270

Act Three

Unlikely — 299

“Avenue Q Tony Coup” — 301

Can We Do Better? — 315

Who Is Mark Belanger? — 326

The Hamilton Mixtape — 335

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS — 353