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Adam Seelig

Canadian-American poet and playwright (born 1975) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Adam Seelig
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Adam Seelig (born 1975) is a Canadian-American poet, playwright, director, composer, and artistic director of One Little Goat Theatre Company in Toronto.[1][2]

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Background and education

Seelig's early experience in theatre included directorial apprenticeships at the Arts Club in Vancouver and the Tarragon Theatre in Toronto.[3] One of Seelig's early poems was published in Saul Bellow’s and Keith Botsford's The Republic of Letters.[4]

Born in Vancouver,[5][6] Seelig is the child of an Israeli father and American mother.[3][7]

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.[8] He also wrote and directed an early play entitled Inside the Whale (named after the essay by George Orwell).[9][unreliable source?] Seelig founded an organization known as the "Silly Society of Stanford."[10]

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Directing

Seelig founded One Little Goat Theatre Company in New York City and Toronto in the early 2000s.[11][12] With the company, he has directed dramatic works by poet-playwrights Yehuda Amichai,[13] Thomas Bernhard,[14] Jon Fosse,[15] Claude Gauvreau,[11] Luigi Pirandello,[16] as well as his own plays, which include reinterpretations of classic material.[17][18]

Seelig's work aims to create poetic theatre.[19][20] This involves "charactor" (combining an actor's onstage persona with their offstage nature), the "prism/gap" (between actor and audience), and ambiguity.[21][22][23] His direction avoids naturalism.[24]

In 2017, Seelig's direction of Smyth/Williams, a dramatic recounting of a verbatim confession of Russell Williams, was criticized by victims' families.[25]

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Writing

Beginning with the 2010 publication of Every Day in the Morning (slow),[26] Seelig's writing combines poetic lyricism with concrete poetry.[27] Written largely in the second person, the play uses punctuation to form what has been described as a "continuous concrete-lyric-drop-poem novella."[28][29]

Since 2010, Seelig's plays employ the same drop-poem technique where "words often align vertically, configured spatially."[21] The format has been described by critics as "a musical score,"[27] a "poetry trick,"[30] and "eye hockey."[31] This format allows actors to "pace and emphasize the text" as they see fit.[32][33]

Music

For Ubu Mayor, "a play with music," Seelig wrote eight songs and played piano in the band for the production premiere.[34][35][36] The play has been referred to as an "anti-musical."[37] 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.[38] 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.[39] 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.[31][40]

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Essays

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Translation

Seelig has translated Hebrew works by modern Israeli poets Yehuda Amichai[50] and Dan Pagis,[51] and contemporary poets Navit Barel[52] and Tehila Hakimi.[53] With Harry Lane, he translated Someone is Going to Come by Norwegian playwright Jon Fosse.[54]

References

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External links

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