At 6:25 a.m. on April 24th, 2015 I performed a site specific production of
Aeschylus Daughters of The Sun in the waves off Año Nuevo State Park. The piece is part of a larger project called IOTA that sets out to perform the existing fragments for the lost plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.
The weather was foggy with some sun over the Santa Cruz Mountains with a temperature of 56℉.
The duration of the performance was 30 seconds (give or take) for an audience of 3 humans and 40 or so Elephant Seals about 100 yards away.
The Fragments…
Rhipae, the setting-place
of our father the Sun.
Where at my father’s setting is the cup fashioned by Hephaestus,
in which he crosses the wide, swelling waters of Ocean, asleep,
escaping the darkness of holy Night with black horses.
Zeus is the aether, Zeus is earth, Zeus is heaven—yes,
Zeus is everything, and whatever there may be beyond that.
And the women of Adria
shall have this manner of lamentation.
It stirred up in you
a flow more abundant than a fountain.
the story of how Phaëthon meet his death
while attempting
to drive his father’s chariot
through the sky.
“his sisters through their grief were transformed into poplar trees, and how every year by the banks of the River Eridanus, which we call the Po, they shed tears of amber, known to the Greeks as ‘electrum,’ since they call the sun ‘Elector’ or ‘the Shining One’—this story has been told by numerous poets, the first of whom, I believe, were Aeschylus, Philoxenus, Euripides, Nicander and Satyrus.”
Pliny the Elder (Natural History 37.31–32)
The Location…
The first known inhabitants of the area were the Quiroste Ohlone.
On January 3, 1603 Sebastian Vizcaino sailed past the point. Father Antonio de la Ascensión, the diarist and chaplain of the expedition, named it Punta de Año Nuevo (New Year’s Point).
The first European land exploration was the Spanish Portolà expedition of 1760-70. The explorers camped at Año Nuevo Creek on November 19th. Franciscan missionary Juan Crespi noted:
“We…halted on a steep rock, in sight of the point which we judged to be Año Nuevo, on the bank of an arroyo which empties into the sea.”
After Mission Santa Cruz was founded in 1791, the Quiroste population plunged on account of diseases brought by the Spanish. After the mid nineteenth century came the development of Año Nuevo Island and agriculture in the surrounding region.
The place was once home to a large population of elephant seals before hunters decimated the population since the mid-20th century.
The seals are now protected and the population has rebounded.