This is the Only Thing I Will Write About Hamilton, I Promise

Last week I saw “Hamilton.”

The tickets were my Christmas gift from my parents, who met me in New York to see the show. I do not know how much they paid, but I do know it was less than the $2000 a friend paid for her boss, a hedge fund manager, and some of their investors — each. I was a theatre major in college, an actress and dramaturg for a few years after I graduated, and I have a love for the art form that feels, at times, utterly consumptive. Still, I couldn’t justify paying more than $150 for a ticket — an arbitrary limit set by my philosophy that theatre is a populist art and that charging more than that is a bastardization of the very tenets of the form. (Note that didn’t stop me from allowing my parents to pay more, because I REALLY WANTED TO SEE HAMILTON.)

I laughed, I cried, I loved it more than “Cats”. Really, “Hamilton” is a testament to the joy-making power of art, and I hope everyone gets a chance to experience it. For its continued existence, we have Jeffery Seller to thank. He is the lead producer of the show, and “Hamilton” is his payday.

Broadway can be a very poor investment, but when shows hit, they really hit. The most successful of them dwarf the revenues of even the biggest Hollywood blockbusters. “Hamilton” could easily run on Broadway for a decade or more. In September, the first road production will open in Chicago, and it will be a “sit down” show, meaning it is intended to stay there for a year or more. Ultimately, there may be as many as seven “Hamilton” companies, in addition to the one on Broadway, performing at the same time in multiple American and international cities. Ticket revenues, over time, could reach into the billions of dollars. If it hits sales of a mere $1 billion, which “Hamilton” could surpass in New York alone, the show will have generated roughly $300 million in profit on the $12.5 million put up by investors. (There are many eye-­popping numbers to contemplate, but maybe the most striking one is this: The show is averaging more than $500,000 in profit every week.)

Those numbers, by the way, exclude whatever astronomical margins are being raked in by the scalper-bots who are charging $2000 a ticket to hapless hedge funders.

There’s something charming about this amount of money being made in the theatre, as it is such a rarity, and the people for whom it is their light tend to be nerds of the loveliest variety. And, thanks to renegotiated contracts, some of that money is finding its way to the performers — as it should. Seller, too, is deserving — he spent five years holding Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hand as he built the good ship, and has done his part to make the show slightly more accessible, in part sponsoring the educational endeavor that will allow thousands of New York school kids to see the show for just $10. On the subject of ticket prices, he is philosophical:

What is the true market value for a ticket to “Hamilton”? The free market, albeit the one being tilted by brokers, indicates that it is far higher than what he is getting. If [Seller] sold his tickets for, say, $800, there would be a bigger pot of money to divvy up. “But what would that do to the show?” he says. “What would it do to Broadway?”

Indeed. Werk, Mr. Seller. Werk.

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