Margins
Out of My Head book cover
Out of My Head
Learning to Reach People Through the Arts
2025
First Published
138
Number of Pages

Co-creator of the Broadway musical RENT, Emmy-winning playwright Billy Aronson describes his bizarre, harrowing, joyful struggle to make a life in the arts in OUT OF MY HEAD. This memoir/how-to book features countless lessons he learned along the way, ranging from tips on finding your voice, finding your audience, and making money with your art, to collaborating on a marriage. Various chapters include: • The story of how RENT emerged from the sidewalks of 1980’s New York and Aronson’s collaboration with Jonathan Larson. • An inside look at the making of a PBS Kids show, PEG + CAT, from pitch to final product, and script writing for cult-hit cartoons BEAVIS AND BUTT-HEAD and COURAGE THE COWARDLY DOG. • Accounts of Aronson’s struggle to keep his brain healthy through the years of self-doubt, near-constant rejection, the extraordinary humiliations only artists can know, and the cutting anxiety and depression to which artists are prone. • Thoughts on making audiences laugh out loud; Aronson’s comedic writing has earned critical comparison to Moliere, Chris Durang, and the Marx Brothers. Revealing and encouraging, OUT OF MY HEAD is a love letter to artists everywhere. “In your lonely struggle to get the indescribable stuff inside your head out to the world,” Aronson writes, “you’re not alone.”

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