at 3:57 p.m. on December 23rd, 2015 I performed a site specific production of an unattributed fragment of one of the lost tragedies by Sophocles in San Gregorio with eight dead fish on a fence. Informally, the piece is called Speechless Fish. This work is part of a larger project called IOTA that brings to life the fragments for the lost plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.
The weather was partly cloudy with a temperature of 52℉ and the duration of the performance was two and a half minutes for an audience of 3 (two of whom were Hell’s Angels).
The Fragment…
A chorus of speechless fish made a din
saluting their dear mistress
with their tails
.
Franciscan missionary Juan Crespi noted in his diary on Tuesday, October 24, 1769:
This is a fine place, with good lands and an abundance of water, where a good mission could be placed; for this purpose I give it as patron San Pedro Regalado, which name it will keep. It is a pleasure to see the great number of black berries in this place, so thick that they prevent us from walking. After traveling seven hours, in which we made two leagues, we arrived at the camping place, which is in a small valley with a good village of heathen, who received us with much friendliness. They are fair, well formed, and some of them are bearded. They have their village near the beach, about half a league from the camping place; but they also have their little houses in this valley, and at present are living in them. The valley has a great deal of land, much of it good; in the middle of it there is an arroyo with plenty of running water which goes to the beach, on whose edge, lower down, these heathen have their village. The only shortcoming that I noticed was the scarcity of wood, but the mountains are near, and there is plenty of brush from the redwoods.
During the Mexican era, the area was part of Rancho San Gregoria, named after Pope Gregory I.
San Gregorio was a vibrant town in the 1850s. A place where wealthy San Franciscans traveled to San Gregorio House by stagecoach for fishing, hunting, sea bathing, and boat races.
The building remains, as does The General Store operating since 1889. In the nineteenth century a Chinese community lived along the creek until the buildings washed away in heavy rains
In 1915, the community held seven cheese factories.