SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Jeffrey Seller is a producer of "Rent," "Avenue Q," "In The Heights" and a little modest worldwide success, of which you may have heard, called "Hamilton." He grew up in a suburb of Detroit called Cardboard Village in a home with parents who could be quarrelsome, and found another kind of home onstage from an early age. Let's ask him to read a section from his new memoir where he was a kid appearing in a community theater musical.
JEFFREY SELLER: (Reading) On the final weekend of the play, I sit in the men's dressing room looking into a mirror surrounded by light bulbs. My blue eyes are illuminated by the bright lights. They are luminescent and powerful. I understand why sometimes I'm mistaken for a girl. I've had family members tell me I'm handsome, and aunts call me gorgeous. But I don't usually feel handsome or gorgeous. At school, people reserve those adjectives for more athletic boys like my friends, Bruce and Jay, not me. However, in front of this mirror, I see me. I am ready to go onstage and bring my character to life. I feel good looking. I feel like a winner.
SIMON: Jeffrey Seller's new memoir, "Theater Kid." And Jeff Seller joins us now from our studios in New York. Jeffrey, thanks so much for being with us.
SELLER: It is my pleasure to be with you today, Scott.
SIMON: A teacher hung that tag on you, didn't she?
SELLER: (Laughter) Mrs. Novetsky, fifth grade.
SIMON: Did you, when you were growing up in suburban Detroit, feel that you didn't fit or that you didn't want to fit?
SELLER: I always felt like an outsider. I was an adopted kid. I was a gay kid. I was a Jewish kid. And maybe most of all, I was a poor kid. And it was embarrassing.
SIMON: You used to accompany your father at night when he - boy, this sounds colorful. Easy for me to say. He drove around serving warrants to people. Tell us about that, and what do you think you saw in people then?
SELLER: I saw people who couldn't pay their monthly bills. I saw people who were getting divorced. I saw people who were getting kicked out of their houses. But I also saw that my dad handled it with respect, without judgment. He was just doing his job as courteously as he could. And, of course, he was a 6-foot-3, 250-pound giant from my eyes as a twig-like 10-year-old boy.
SIMON: Your father also had a brief career as a clown, didn't he?
SELLER: Oh, God, Scott. One of the most surprising things ever was when my father said, I'm going to join the Shriners so I can be in the Shrine Circus and be a clown, and make children happy.
SIMON: He loved it. Your mother didn't think it was such a great idea, did she?
SELLER: Well, imagine what it's like where we can barely pay the bills to begin with. And instead of serving papers, he spends the - basically three full weeks at the Detroit State Fair grounds being a clown, like, in four shows a day and spending money on his clown costume instead of the clothes we need to get through the winter.
SIMON: Looking back on it now, what do you see in that period of time, in your father?
SELLER: Well, it was the manifestation of everything that was loving and wonderful and philanthropic about my father because he loved making all those balloons for children in hospitals and taking photos with these kids with those smiles on their faces, which was so beautiful. And he was impoverishing our family by doing it. Scott, I'm going to cry. I'm sorry. It's just like, ah.
SIMON: One of the things I love about the book is that you spend most of the time telling us how you get to success in New York. This is not a backstage dish-dish. Go to the University of Michigan, come to New York, start working for booking agents. One day, you see a rock monologue by Jonathan Larson called "Boho Days."
SELLER: Yeah.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WHY")
RAUL ESPARZA: (Singing) I thought, hey, what a way to spend a day. Hey, what a way to spend a day.
SIMON: A line in a song, what a way to spend a day. What did that set off in you?
SELLER: It's setting it off right now. I'm getting chills all through my body from that notion of what a way to spend the day, because Jonathan was a 30-year-old composer of rock musicals that nobody wanted to produce. And this song was all about his love of musicals.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WHY")
ESPARZA: (Singing) Three o'clock went to rehearse in the gym. Mike played "Doc," who didn't sing. Fine with him. We sang "Got A Rocket In Your Pocket and "The Jets Are Gonna Have Their Day - Tonight."
SELLER: I watched this at age 25, and I said, how does this guy know my life story? I've never met him before. So I wrote him a letter the next day saying, I want to produce your musicals.
SIMON: I'll just say the stories of all your prize-winning musicals, including "Hamilton," are in here. You worked with Lin-Manuel Miranda on "In The Heights." What spark leaped in your minds that made you both say, ah, a musical about the life of the first secretary of the U.S. treasury. That's got winner written all over it?
SELLER: (Laughter) Or you could even say the first bureaucrat, right? He created the American bureaucracy. When I am confronted with a new musical, a new idea, I am always looking for two things. One, I want to be surprised. Two, I want my ears to be pricked in a whole new way. I want to go, oh, my God. I've never heard that kind of sound on Broadway before. And the first time I heard Lin perform a rap for "In The Heights," the hair on my arms stood up.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "IN THE HEIGHTS")
LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA: (Rapping) Lights up on Washington Heights, up at the break of day. I wake up, and I got this little punk I gotta chase away. Pop the grate at the crack of dawn. Sing while I wipe down the awning. Hey y'all, good morning.
SELLER: I thought, I've never heard that before. And what I'd like to say is that if "In The Heights" was this warm, enveloping Caribbean water rap, then "Hamilton" was like a lightning bolt. Pow. It absolutely compelled you from the beginning, all the way to the end.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ALEXANDER HAMILTON")
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTISTS: (Singing) Just you wait. Alexander Hamilton (Alexander Hamilton). We're waiting in the wings for you (Waiting in the wings for you). You could never back down. You never learned to take your time. Oh, Alexander Hamilton.
SIMON: What can the theater unlock in all of us?
SELLER: Hope, a sense of belonging, a sense like, oh, I can fit in there. I saw so many kids who experienced "Rent" as a safe haven, where they went, oh, I can have a made family, a chosen family like this. I just want to be with those characters. And they got to be with them every time they listened to the album, and they got to be with them every time they came to see the show. The world's a better place for Rent. The world's a better place for Jonathan Larson. The world is a better place for Hamilton and Lin-Manuel Miranda.
SIMON: Jeffrey Seller, his new memoir, "Theater Kid." Thank you so much for being with us.
SELLER: What a pleasure to talk, Scott.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ALEXANDER HAMILTON")
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTISTS: (Singing) Oh, Alexander Hamilton - Alexander Hamilton. When America sings for you, will they know what you overcame? Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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