NEW YORK (AP) — Jeffrey Seller, the Broadway producer behind such landmark hits as “Rent,” “Avenue Q” and “Hamilton,” didn't initially write a memoir for us. He wrote it for himself.
“I really felt a personal existential need to write my story. I had to make sense of where I came from myself,” he says in his memento-filled Times Square office. “I started doing it as an exercise for me and I ultimately did it for theater kids of all ages everywhere.”
Seller's “Theater Kid” — which he wrote even before finding a publishing house — traces the rise of an unlikely theater force who was raised in a poor neighborhood far from Broadway, along the way giving readers a portrait of the Great White Way in the gritty 1970s and '80s. In it, he is brutally honest.
“I am a jealous person. I am an envious person," he says. "I’m a kind person, I’m an honest person. Sometimes I am a mean person and a stubborn person and a joyous person. And as the book shows, I was particularly in that era, often a very lonely person.”
Seller, 60. who is candid about trysts, professional snubs, mistakes and his unorthodox family, says he wasn't interested in writing a recipe book on how to make a producer.
“I was more interested in exploring, first and foremost, how a poor, gay, adopted Jewish kid from Cardboard Village in Oak Park, Michigan, gets to Broadway and produces ‘Rent’ at age 31.”
It is the story of an outsider who is captivated by theater as a child who acts in Purim plays, directed a musical by Andrew Lippa, becomes a booking agent in New York and then a producer. Then he tracks down his biological family.
“My life has been a process of finally creating groups that I feel part of and accepting where I do fit in,” he says. “I also wrote this book for anyone who’s ever felt out.”
Jonathan Karp, president and CEO of Simon & Schuster, says he isn't surprised that Seller delivered such a strong memoir because he believes the producer has an instinctive artistic sensibility.
“There aren’t that many producers you could say have literally changed the face of theater. And I think that’s what Jeffrey Seller has done," says Karp. “It is the work of somebody who is much more than a producer, who is writer in his own right and who has a really interesting and emotional and dramatic story to tell.”
The book reaches a crescendo with a behind-the-scenes look at his friendship and collaboration with playwright and composer Jonathan Larson and the making of his “Rent.”
Seller writes about a torturous creative process in which Larson would take one step forward with the script over years only to take two backward. He also writes movingly about carrying on after Larson, who died from an aortic dissection the day before “Rent's” first off-Broadway preview.
“'Rent' changed my life forever, but, more important, ‘Rent’ changed musical theater forever. There is no ‘In the Heights’ without ‘Rent,’” Seller says. “I don’t think there’s a ‘Next to Normal’ without ‘Rent.’ I don’t think there’s a ‘Dear Evan Hansen’ without ‘Rent.’”
So enamored was Seller with “Rent” that he initially ended his memoir there in the mid-'90s. It took some coaxing from Karp to get him to include stories about “Avenue Q,” “In the Heights” and “Hamilton.”
“'Hamilton' becomes a cultural phenomenon. It’s the biggest hit of my career,” Seller says. “It’s one of the biggest hits in Broadway history. It’s much bigger hit than ‘Rent’ was. But that doesn’t change what ‘Rent’ did.”
In a sort of theater flex, the memoir's audiobook has appearances by Annaleigh Ashford, Danny Burstein, Darren Criss, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Lindsay Mendez, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Andrew Rannells, Conrad Ricamora and Christopher Sieber. There’s original music composed by Tony- and Pulitzer Prize-winner Tom Kitt.
The portrait of Broadway Seller offers when he first arrives is one far different from today, where the theaters are bursting with new plays and musicals and the season's box office easily blows past the $1 billion mark.
In 1995, the year before “Rent” debuted off-Broadway, there was only one Tony Award-eligible candidate for best original musical score and the same for best book — “Sunset Boulevard.” This season, there were 14 new eligible musicals.
“I think that’s just such a great moment in Broadway history to say, ‘This is before ’Rent,' and then look what happens after. Not because ‘Rent’ brought in an era of rock musicals, but it opened the doors to more experimentation and more unexpected ideas, more variety.”
He is drawn to contemporary stories with modern issues and all four of his Tony wins for best musical are set in New York.
“For me, shows that were about people we might know, that were about our issues, about our dreams, about our shame, about things that embarrass us — that’s what touched me the most deeply,” he says. “I was looking to have the hair on my arms rise. I was looking to be emotionally moved.”
FILE - Jeffrey Seller, center, producer of the Broadway musical "Hamilton" accepts the award for best musical at the Tony Awards in New York on June 12, 2016. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)
FILE - Producer Kevin McCollum, from left, actor Lin-Manuel Miranda, producer Jeffrey Seller and producer Jill Furman pose backstage with their Tony Award for best musical "In the Heights," in New York, on June 15, 2008. (AP Photo/Stuart Ramson, File)
FILE - Producer Jeffrey Seller appears at the premiere of NBC's "Rise" on March 7, 2018, in New York. (Photo by Andy Kropa/Invision/AP, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Becky Pepper-Jackson finished third in the discus throw in West Virginia last year though she was in just her first year of high school. Now a 15-year-old sophomore, Pepper-Jackson is aware that her upcoming season could be her last.
West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls and women's sports, and is among the more than two dozen states with similar laws. Though the West Virginia law has been blocked by lower courts, the outcome could be different at the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which has allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced in the past year.
The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in two cases over whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education. The second case comes from Idaho, where college student Lindsay Hecox challenged that state's law.
Decisions are expected by early summer.
President Donald Trump's Republican administration has targeted transgender Americans from the first day of his second term, including ousting transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.
Pepper-Jackson has become the face of the nationwide battle over the participation of transgender girls in athletics that has played out at both the state and federal levels as Republicans have leveraged the issue as a fight for athletic fairness for women and girls.
“I think it’s something that needs to be done,” Pepper-Jackson said in an interview with The Associated Press that was conducted over Zoom. “It’s something I’m here to do because ... this is important to me. I know it’s important to other people. So, like, I’m here for it.”
She sat alongside her mother, Heather Jackson, on a sofa in their home just outside Bridgeport, a rural West Virginia community about 40 miles southwest of Morgantown, to talk about a legal fight that began when she was a middle schooler who finished near the back of the pack in cross-country races.
Pepper-Jackson has grown into a competitive discus and shot put thrower. In addition to the bronze medal in the discus, she finished eighth among shot putters.
She attributes her success to hard work, practicing at school and in her backyard, and lifting weights. Pepper-Jackson has been taking puberty-blocking medication and has publicly identified as a girl since she was in the third grade, though the Supreme Court's decision in June upholding state bans on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors has forced her to go out of state for care.
Her very improvement as an athlete has been cited as a reason she should not be allowed to compete against girls.
“There are immutable physical and biological characteristic differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And if we allow biological males to play sports against biological females, those differences will erode the ability and the places for women in these sports which we have fought so hard for over the last 50 years,” West Virginia's attorney general, JB McCuskey, said in an AP interview. McCuskey said he is not aware of any other transgender athlete in the state who has competed or is trying to compete in girls or women’s sports.
Despite the small numbers of transgender athletes, the issue has taken on outsize importance. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women's sports after Trump signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.
The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.
About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.
Those allied with the administration on the issue paint it in broader terms than just sports, pointing to state laws, Trump administration policies and court rulings against transgender people.
"I think there are cultural, political, legal headwinds all supporting this notion that it’s just a lie that a man can be a woman," said John Bursch, a lawyer with the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom that has led the legal campaign against transgender people. “And if we want a society that respects women and girls, then we need to come to terms with that truth. And the sooner that we do that, the better it will be for women everywhere, whether that be in high school sports teams, high school locker rooms and showers, abused women’s shelters, women’s prisons.”
But Heather Jackson offered different terms to describe the effort to keep her daughter off West Virginia's playing fields.
“Hatred. It’s nothing but hatred,” she said. "This community is the community du jour. We have a long history of isolating marginalized parts of the community.”
Pepper-Jackson has seen some of the uglier side of the debate on display, including when a competitor wore a T-shirt at the championship meet that said, “Men Don't Belong in Women's Sports.”
“I wish these people would educate themselves. Just so they would know that I’m just there to have a good time. That’s it. But it just, it hurts sometimes, like, it gets to me sometimes, but I try to brush it off,” she said.
One schoolmate, identified as A.C. in court papers, said Pepper-Jackson has herself used graphic language in sexually bullying her teammates.
Asked whether she said any of what is alleged, Pepper-Jackson said, “I did not. And the school ruled that there was no evidence to prove that it was true.”
The legal fight will turn on whether the Constitution's equal protection clause or the Title IX anti-discrimination law protects transgender people.
The court ruled in 2020 that workplace discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination, but refused to extend the logic of that decision to the case over health care for transgender minors.
The court has been deluged by dueling legal briefs from Republican- and Democratic-led states, members of Congress, athletes, doctors, scientists and scholars.
The outcome also could influence separate legal efforts seeking to bar transgender athletes in states that have continued to allow them to compete.
If Pepper-Jackson is forced to stop competing, she said she will still be able to lift weights and continue playing trumpet in the school concert and jazz bands.
“It will hurt a lot, and I know it will, but that’s what I’ll have to do,” she said.
Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Becky Pepper-Jackson poses for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
The Supreme Court stands is Washington, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
FILE - Protestors hold signs during a rally at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on March 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, file)
