What makes a great the­ater mem­oir? Jef­frey Seller’s The­ater Kid has it all — an engag­ing sto­ry­teller, a com­pelling rags-to-rich­es through­line, and a can­did account of how it all hap­pened. It’s also packed with insid­er details about his many stage productions. 

Sell­er was adopt­ed as a baby by Jew­ish par­ents in Michi­gan: a some­times-vio­lent father who bank­rupt­ed the fam­i­ly busi­ness and cheat­ed on his wife, and a moth­er who worked at a drug store. The con­flicts aris­ing from those domes­tic ten­sions may well have sharp­ened Seller’s sense of the dra­ma of every­day life.

It was Seller’s mid­dle school music teacher who helped set the course of his life, cast­ing him as a munchkin in a school pro­duc­tion of The Wiz­ard of Oz. Sell­ers had found his call­ing. Just a few months lat­er, at age of twelve, he was cast in a play pro­duced by the local pro­fes­sion­al the­ater com­pa­ny, Stage­crafters. Thanks to his tal­ent for busi­ness as well as the stage, he lat­er went on to pro­duce some of Broadway’s biggest hits, includ­ing Rent, Avenue Q, In the Heights, and Hamil­ton.

In the first half of his mem­oir, Sell­er recalls the ear­ly signs of his future as a the­ater pro­fes­sion­al. When he was still a teenag­er, for exam­ple, he read a lot of plays as com­mit­tee chair for a local children’s the­ater. In hind­sight, he rec­og­nizes, the expe­ri­ence primed him to think about the plays’ box-office poten­tial, not just the sto­ries and the dia­logue. With this kind of start, it’s no sur­prise that he became a mas­ter of the finan­cial side of the­atri­cal production.

The author is hon­est when dis­cussing the long-stand­ing issues in his fam­i­ly life. After his moth­er announced that she and his father were get­ting a divorce, Seller’s father asked him for a loan. Sell­er final­ly told his father what he had long felt: ​“You have failed as a father, you have failed as a hus­band. You’re a los­er. Leave us alone. You’re finished.” 

Sell­er is also can­did about his own rela­tion­ships. He recalls his con­fu­sion when an eighth-grade class­mate said, ​“I think you’re gay.” Years lat­er, when he was liv­ing with the composer/​librettist Andrew Lip­pa, he reflect­ed that ​“I have nev­er said the words I am gay.”

The sec­ond half of the book offers a wealth of back­stage sto­ries about the numer­ous shows Sell­er has been involved with through­out his career. His keen insights, told in a direct, con­ver­sa­tion­al style, are a must-read for the­ater afi­ciona­dos and biog­ra­phy read­ers alike.