The milestones in Michael Cassel’s life aren’t like those of ordinary people. At 15, when most Australian boys are beginning to party and test their boundaries, Cassel was overseeing his first carols by candlelight concert. For 4000 people. When he turned 21, that coming of age when young people begin to turn their thoughts to the future, Cassel was setting up Disney Theatrical Group’s Australian business.

Remember your first backpacking experience, a rite of passage for many Australians in their 20s? Cassel was travelling at this age too. Only it was to Brazil and Argentina overseeing Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, to South Africa and Shanghai with The Lion King, and to Korea with Aida, in his capacity as Disney’s director of international business.

While most couples share news of weddings and babies on Facebook or Instagram, the birth of Cassel’s son Vaughn was announced in the Perth press, coinciding with the opening night there of Les Miserables, which Cassel was executive producing. And whereas most kindergarten kids bring in photos of their new puppies or favourite book for news, Cassel’s daughter Eveleigh talked about her new friend Cyndi Lauper. Her teacher was intrigued enough to politely inquire about the source of this news: Cassel had brought Kinky Boots to town and with it Lauper, the show’s composer and lyricist, who had seemingly hit it off with young Eveleigh.

No, Michael Cassel’s life is not the norm. Nor is the man himself what you might expect, given the meteoric rise this 36-year-old has pulled off in the brutal world that is showbiz.

8-year-old jobseeker

Cassel grew up in the coastal town of Kiama, south of Sydney, the eldest of four children to his builder-turned-public servant father and real estate mother. He had ambitions to be a performer, taking drama class and playing piano with the local amateur dramatic society, Roo Theatre Company. When he was eight he began writing letters, pitching himself to Neighbours casting agent Jan Russ and later to Ray Martin, offering to co-host The Midday Show. Unswayed by negative responses that nevertheless always included words of advice, Cassel and his dad pinned all the rejection letters onto a wall in the family home.

His first family trip to Sydney aged 12 to see Harry M. Miller’s production of Jesus Christ Superstar had a lasting effect. “Superstar specifically made me want to be a producer, because theirs was the name at the top of the list. And that must have meant they were pulling it all together,” Cassel recalls with a chuckle. “But I didn’t know what a producer did.” He began recording every televised concert event he could find: the Logies, Olympics opening ceremonies, Australia Day concerts. He penned another letter, this time to Miller requesting a job. The response – soon stuck to the wall – suggested he finish high school then get back in touch.

But Cassel was impatient to get his hands dirty. “I remember being in the car with Dad and saying, ‘I think I’m going to do a carols by candlelight concert’. This was in January so I was clearly still high on Christmas. Mum and Dad went along with it. There was so much going on at home I think they thought, ‘You want to occupy yourself for the next 12 months with carols? Go for it!’” And go for it he did. Within five months he’d convinced the council to lend him a park and sponsor the event. He set about bringing in a raft of media sponsors, an orchestra and a massed school and community choir.

“I was hoping for 500 people and we ended up getting three to four thousand. We ended up growing out of that space. By year five we were 7000 people so I moved it to Wollongong where there was more space and sponsorship,” Cassel recalls. “I did it for 10 years and our final year, when I was just doing it for a bit of fun because I was working for Disney, we did it at WIN Stadium and had 10,000 people. McDonald’s and AAPT were our primary sponsors. We never earned any money out of carols, it was always free. It was my baby, something I had fun doing.”

How to create opportunity

Sitting on this day in the smart but modest offices of the Michael Cassel Group at Sydney’s Lyric Theatre in Pyrmont, it is increasingly clear how consciously this man laid out his career path. Working as an international music theatre producer was never going to just fall in the lap of a boy from Kiama. It isn’t that Cassel has made the most of opportunities offered to him: he made damn sure to create those opportunities in the first place.

Cassel did follow up Miller, but didn’t wait until he had finished high school. From the age of 16 he would travel to Sydney to do work experience with the impresario every holidays, moving to Sydney and taking up a full-time job with Miller as soon as school was behind him. Cassel credits Miller with giving him some of the most valuable advice he’s received.

“A couple of weeks after working with him, Harry called me into his office and said, ‘Michael, you want to be a producer, what did you notice when you walked into reception today?’ I hadn’t noticed anything, so he told me to go back down and take another look. The light bulb was out, so I went back and told him and he said, ‘Exactly. If you want to be a producer you keep your eyes open and if something’s not right then get it fixed.’ His message was that if you can’t take care of your home or office you don’t have the level of detail required to put on a show and get things right. Every little detail has to be perfect.”

Miller’s managing director was James Thane, whose name was emblazoned in Cassel’s memory from reading the Jesus Christ Superstar program all those years ago. Thane introduced Cassel to The Lion King, his first international musical experience, when Cassel and then-girlfriend (now wife) Camille were holidaying in Europe.

“I had goose bumps, I was so in awe and just wanted to be a part of something so amazing,” Cassel says. “I bought the program and book and stayed up till 3am reading it. The next day we went back to see it again. Afterwards I went to a web café to email James to say thanks and saw that Disney Theatrical had just hired him as their managing director in Australia. So I wrote: ‘I’ve just seen the news, I want a job.’”

21-year-old with dream job

Cassel was 21 years old and thrown in at the deep end as Thane’s assistant – in a staff of two. He took on anything that came his way: answering phones, typing letters, co-ordinating Thane’s diary. “The good thing was because we were small there were real opportunities.”

Thane trusted him enough to establish the Melbourne office to focus on the upcoming The Lion King tour to that city. “That was a great experience as I was working on my own essentially. I was lucky enough to have a great education, good mentors and guidance.”

Thane remains a mentor to Cassel, as does the president of Disney Theatrical Group, Thomas Schumacher, who asked Cassel to take The Lion King to China in 2006 for its inaugural tour. Schumacher went on to offer Cassel a job in New York as director, international. The next five years saw Cassel responsible for overseeing any Disney shows produced outside North America, and that was when his real education began. Cassel was exposed to working in cultures where the language, customs and practices were completely foreign, teaching him the art of diplomacy, patience and the importance of a cohesive team. He was involved in everything from the deal-making process to the challenge of working in a theatre that hadn’t yet been built and wouldn’t be ready in time for opening.

“Your job as a producer is to find the answers,” he says. “It doesn’t mean you have them, but you have to find the right people who do, so you can come up with solutions. And you can’t get fazed because you’ve got 156 other people who are going to take their cue from you.”

Some scenarios required particularly quick thinking, such as the time he received an urgent phone call from his company manager instructing him to come immediately to the downstairs toilets of a Shanghai theatre where they were producing The Lion King.

“He opened up one of the toilet cubicles and they’d stored all these fake Lion King costumes of gazelles and lions. They’d copied the costumes and were doing a roadshow – a government-run theatre! It looked amazing, you couldn’t tell the difference between what was real [and what was fake]. It was well intentioned, but I had to say to them, ‘You can’t just reproduce someone’s designs. These belong to [designer] Julie Taymor,’” says Cassel, still shaking his head at the memory.

Bringing Les Mis to Australia

In 2011, after five years with Disney in New York and following the birth of Eveleigh, the first grandchild on either side, the pull of home was strong. “I loved my time at Disney and was upset when I left, even though it was of my own volition. I always thought I’d be there forever but in the back of my mind I knew one day I wanted to be my own producer.”

It took 12 months for him to do just that. He did some work for Australian entertainment group Global Creatures as well as for British producer Sir Cameron Mackintosh. In August 2012 Mackintosh asked Cassel if he would help bring his new production of Les Miserables to Australia. If Cassel was awestruck to receive such an offer from such a man he didn’t show it, agreeing to oversee the show, but on his terms.

“I said I’d love to produce Les Mis but in doing so would love to set up my own company, essentially pick and choose my own projects. And he thought that was a marvellous idea. Everything I’d been thinking about forever I could now put into practice, it was like my destiny.”

The Michael Cassel Group was born in January 2013. Within its first year Cassel had secured the Australian rights to two of the big Broadway and West End hits: the Olivier- and Tony award-winning Kinky Boots (now playing Melbourne and opening April 20 in Sydney) and Beautiful: The Carole King Story, which opened on Broadway in 2014, London’s West End in 2015 and comes to Sydney this September. The trademark Cassel chutzpah was in evidence again. He’d seen Kinky Boots on Broadway soon after its April 2013 global premiere. “Cameron had encouraged me to see it and I had the best time. Afterwards I rushed onto the street and called my family and said, ‘I’ve just seen the show I desperately want to do in Australia.’” He organised a meeting with the US producers and put it to them that if they had plans to bring the show to Australia he’d like to be the one to do it.

As to why international producers would entrust their hit show to a new company with no local runs on the board, Cassel is frank. “I think I had a good reputation from the Disney background. I know they spoke with Tom Schumacher and hope he would have given me a good review. And I was passionate about it. The biggest thing is being passionate, and having your hands all around it. It’s not just a scorecard where we’re trying to clock up titles. We’re doing this because I actually want to sit in the theatre for eight weeks and make sure we get it right,” he says.

Seeking boffo success

Cassel would appear to have got it right with Kinky Boots, which has been a success with both audiences and critics since opening in October in Melbourne. However, it hasn’t all been five-star reviews and box-office gold. Cassel is a co-producer on Jonathan Church’s West End production Singin’ in the Rain, which opened in Melbourne last year to mixed reviews and played to modest houses on its national tour, which ended in Perth in late January.

“In a market that’s incredibly competitive there’s a lot vying for the dollar,” Cassel says, noting the competition at the time from The Sound of Music and then-upcoming productions Aladdin, his own Kinky Boots and The Book of Mormon. “Singin’ in the Rain … hasn’t been such that we had to pull the pin. It just hasn’t been the dizzying heights we hoped it would be. It’s been a moderate success as opposed to a boffo success.”

Does a “moderate success” make it more challenging next time you’re approaching potential investors? “I think it does,” Cassel replies. “The critical thing is being able to (a) repay the investment and (b) show a good return. Kinky Boots is a $6- to $7 million production. It’s no small investment but we took the view it’s accessible and has a high chance of recouping its investment and having a profitable run. And that’s what we’re on track to do. It’s a huge risk, investing in musical theatre. It can also be hugely profitable.”

The challenge of producing musicals in Australia is the cost of shipping productions between cities, a lack of varying-sized theatres and competition to secure the rights to import the big West End and Broadway hits. It’s surprising then, to learn the group of producers here is relatively amicable. They are also constantly monitoring everything going on in New York and London, including Groundhog Day from the team behind Tim Minchin’s wildly successful Matilda. Groundhog Day opened to critical acclaim at the Old Vic in London last year and transfers to Broadway in April.

Has Cassel put his hand up to produce it here? “Nup.” Why not? “Locally Louise Withers & Associates produced Matilda with Michael Coppel, so I expect she will have gone for Groundhog Day.” But did you try? “Nup.” Why not? “Because I think Louise should have it.” That seems cordial? “I try to be. You have to be. Particularly when you own your own business.” The approach appears to be serving him well. In addition to Kinky Boots and Beautiful: The Carole King Story, Disney has entrusted him with the 2018 Asian tour of The Lion King.

4 groups that helped

Cassel may have made it to his coveted top-poster billing but he knows better than to claim success on his own. To his mind there are always four groups he is answerable to. First among equals are the authors, originating producers and creative teams. “They’re giving us the rights and we’ve got to take care of them, so we have to be honest in our dealings.”

Then there’s the audience, paying up to $150 a ticket and hopefully spreading the word about the latest show.

Without investors, there would be no shows. “We can’t be fortune-tellers and tell them whether or not it’s going to be a hit but we can tell them we’re going to do our best.”

Finally there’s the office team, cast and crew. “The trust with them is so important, because when we do have a flop – and a flop will be in our future, otherwise we’d be the only producers never to have one – I want everyone to know we tried our very best and were always respectful of everyone. That’s really important because when you pick yourself up and dust yourself off to start again, hopefully those people are still around and want to work with you again.”

It is a policy Cassel has stood by ever since he decided to bring some Christmas spirit to his local community.

“Success has many fathers but at the end of the day if something doesn’t work, the producer has to take responsibility.” Unsurprisingly, each and every light in Cassel’s office is brilliantly aglow.

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The AFR Magazine's annual Arts issue is out on Friday, February 24 inside The Australian Financial Review.