Who

The boyish Broadway producer is the money behind hits like Rent and Avenue Q.

Backstory

After graduating from the University of Michigan in 1986, Seller moved to New York to take a job as a theater publicist. In the early 1990s he turned to production, teaming up with Kevin McCollum to found a company called The Producing Office. Their first major success came a few years later when they bought the commercial rights to Jonathan Larson's Rent for just $4,000, and minted millions as the show swept the globe and became a cultural touchstone. The re-imagining of Puccini's La Bohème proved one of the most successful franchises in Broadway history, spawning countless productions around the world, and yielding a big-screen adaptation produced by Seller and McCollum along with Jane Rosenthal and Robert De Niro. The show charmed Midwestern tourists at the Nederlander Theatre for 12 years before a final, plaintive performance of "Seasons of Love" in 2008.

Of note

Rent established Seller and McCollum's modus operandi—seeking out small productions created by unknowns and then taking them to the big stage in the hopes of scoring a breakout hit. That's what happened when they turned the scrappy, downtown puppet musical Avenue Q into a Broadway phenomenon, winning the Tony for Best Musical in the process. Unfortunately, they haven't many successes since; in late 2005, they shipped Avenue Q to Las Vegas but the crowds in Sin City never really warmed to the ribald puppetry and the musical closed after a few months.

Their return to Broadway in 2006 with the musical version of High Fidelity proved a dud: The $10 million show earned mostly dreadful reviews and closed after just 14 performances. Seller and McCollum have been equally misfortunate with 37 Arts, the arts venue they opened with Mikhail Baryshnikov on the West Side in 2005. The venue has struggled to find audiences since its opening and has been plagued with debt—it's now teetering on the edge of foreclosure. The duo earned redemption in 2008 when they transferred their Washington Heights-set salsa/hip-hop musical In the Heights to Broadway to largely favorable reviews and a Tony Award for Best New Musical in 2008.

Personal

Seller lives with his longtime partner, photographer Josh Lehrer. They split their time between an apartment on Riverside Drive and a farmhouse in Sagaponack.