Adam Seelig

Seelig founded One Little Goat Theatre Company in New York City and Toronto in the early 2000s.[2][3] With the company, he has directed dramatic works by poet-playwrights Yehuda Amichai,[4] Thomas Bernhard,[5] Jon Fosse,[6] Claude Gauvreau,[2] Luigi Pirandello,[7] as well as his own plays, which include reinterpretations of classic material.[8][9]

Seelig stages "poetic theatre."[10][11] This involves "charactor" (combining an actor's onstage persona with their offstage nature), the "prism/gap" (between actor and audience), and ambiguity.[12][13][14] His direction "avoids naturalism."[15]

Beginning with the 2010 publication of Every Day in the Morning (slow),[16] a work of "concrete lyric fiction,"[17] Seelig's writing combines aspects of the contemporary lyric with the appearance of concrete poetry.[18] Written largely in the second person, Every Day in the Morning (slow) eschews punctuation, forming a single sentence that is at the same time a "continuous concrete-lyric-drop-poem novella."[19][20]

The plays Seelig has written since 2010 employ the same drop-poem technique through which "words often align vertically, configured spatially."[12] The format has been described by critics as "a musical score,"[18] a "poetry trick,"[21] and "eye hockey."[22] The concrete lyric, drop-poem format allows actors to "pace and emphasize the text" as they see fit.[23][24]

For Ubu Mayor, "a play with music," Seelig wrote eight songs and played piano in the band for the production premiere.[25][26][27] The play has been referred to as an "anti-musical."[28] For Music Music Life Death Music: An Absurdical, Seelig wrote seven songs and played a Fender Rhodes electric piano in the band for the production premiere.[29] The sheet music for both of these plays is included in their print and electronic publications.

Music is foregrounded (rather than assigned to the background) in Seelig's productions.[30] Music also plays a key role in Seelig's "drop-poem novella" Every Day in the Morning (slow), with particular emphasis on minimalist composers such as Steve Reich.[22][31]

• "Beckett's Dying Remains: The Process of Playwriting in the 'Ohio Impromptu' Manuscripts."[32]
• The Anonlinear Aesthetic."[33]
• "Transcending Hyperspecificity."[34]
• "EMERGENSEE: GET HEAD OUT OF ASS: 'Charactor' and Poetic Theatre."[12]
• Contemporary Canadian poets Seelig has reviewed or interviewed include Gregory Betts,[35] Sylvia Legris,[36] Donato Mancini,[37] Lisa Robertson,[38] Jordan Scott[39] and playwright-novelist Sean Dixon.[40]

From the Hebrew, Seelig has translated works by modern Israeli poets Yehuda Amichai,[41] Dan Pagis[42] and contemporary poets Navit Barel[43] and Tehila Hakimi.[44] With Harry Lane, he translated Someone is Going to Come by Norwegian playwright Jon Fosse.[45][46]

As an undergraduate at Stanford University, Seelig studied English Literature with John Felstiner, Marjorie Perloff and Gilbert Sorrentino, and Theatre with Carl Weber, completing a BA in 1998 with a thesis on Samuel Beckett's original manuscripts[47] in addition to writing and directing an early play entitled Inside the Whale (named after the essay by George Orwell).[48] Seelig founded a "nebulous, unofficial organization" known as the "Silly Society of Stanford"[49] and seems to represent the university's "stoners and poets" in a New Yorker article that recounts his inability to identify classmate and celebrated golfer Tiger Woods.[50]

Seelig's early years in theatre include directorial apprenticeships at the Arts Club in Vancouver and the Tarragon Theatre in Toronto.[51] An early poem was published in Saul Bellow and Keith Botsford's The Republic of Letters.[52]

Born in Vancouver,[53][54] Seelig is the son of an Israeli father and American mother.[51][55]

• Adam Seelig at One Little Goat Theatre Company
• Adam Seelig at Poetry Foundation
• Adam Seelig at BookThug