# Adam Seelig

Adam Seelig (born in 1975) is a Canadian and American poet, playwright, director, composer, and Artistic Director of One Little Goat Theatre Company in Toronto.

## Background and education

Seelig's early years in theatre included directorial apprenticeships at the Arts Club in Vancouver and the Tarragon Theatre in Toronto. An early poem by Seelig was published in Saul Bellow and Keith Botsford's The Republic of Letters.
Born in Vancouver, Seelig is the son of an Israeli father and American mother.
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 in addition to writing and directing an early play entitled Inside the Whale (named after the essay by George Orwell). Seelig founded an organization known as the "Silly Society of Stanford."

## Directing

Seelig founded One Little Goat Theatre Company in New York City and Toronto in the early 2000s. With the company, he has directed dramatic works by poet-playwrights Yehuda Amichai, Thomas Bernhard, Jon Fosse, Claude Gauvreau, Luigi Pirandello, as well as his own plays, which include reinterpretations of classic material.
Seelig attempts to create poetic theatre. This is said to involve "charactor" (combining an actor's onstage persona with their offstage nature), the "prism/gap" (between actor and audience), and ambiguity. His direction attempts to avoid naturalism.
In 2017, Seelig faced criticism from victims' families when he directed Smyth/Williams, a dramatic recounting of a verbatim confession of one of Canada's most heinous criminals.

## Writing

Beginning with the 2010 publication of Every Day in the Morning (slow), Seelig's writing attempts to combine poetic lyricism with concrete poetry. Written largely in the second person, the play seems to use punctuation to form a single sentence that is a "continuous concrete-lyric-drop-poem novella."
The plays Seelig has written since 2010 employ the same drop-poem technique where "words often align vertically, configured spatially." The format has been described by critics as "a musical score," a "poetry trick," and "eye hockey." This format attempts to allow actors to "pace and emphasize the text" as they see fit.

## Music

For Ubu Mayor, "a play with music," Seelig wrote eight songs and played piano in the band for the production premiere. The play has been referred to as an "anti-musical." 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. 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. 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.

## Essays

* "Beckett's Dying Remains: The Process of Playwriting in the 'Ohio Impromptu' Manuscripts."
* “The Anonlinear Aesthetic."
* "Transcending Hyperspecificity."
* "EMERGENSEE: GET HEAD OUT OF ASS: 'Charactor' and Poetic Theatre."
* Contemporary Canadian poets Seelig has reviewed or interviewed include Gregory Betts, Sylvia Legris, Donato Mancini, Lisa Robertson, Jordan Scott, and playwright-novelist Sean Dixon.

## Translation

Seelig has translated Hebrew works by modern Israeli poets Yehuda Amichai, Dan Pagis and contemporary poets Navit Barel and Tehila Hakimi. With Harry Lane, he translated Someone is Going to Come by Norwegian playwright Jon Fosse.