at 2:45 p.m. on October 3rd, 2015 I performed a site specific theater piece
of the only remaining fragment from Aeschylus’ The Argo in the hold of the schooner C.A. Thayer at San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park. Aeschylus The Argo 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 partly cloudy with a temperature of 74℉.
The duration of the performance was on one minute for an audience of 5.
based on Aeschylus’ The Argo
adapted and directed by Jamie Lyons
The early stages of the Argonaut expedition
perhaps even its very beginning
The Argo was constructed
by the shipwright Argus with the help of Athena
In her prow a piece of timber
from the sacred forest of Dodona
spoke prophecies
In the end
Argo was consecrated to Poseidon
then translated to the sky
into the constellation of Argo Navis
The Fragment…
The holy speaking beam of the Argo
groaned aloud
The Location…
the three-masted schooner C.A. Thayer
at San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park
In 1895, Danish-born Hans D. Bendixsen built C.A. Thayer in his Humboldt Bay shipyard.
Between 1895 and 1912 C.A.Thayer sailed from E.K. Wood’s lumber mill in Grays Harbor, Washington, to San Francisco. She also carried lumber as far south as Mexico and occasionally even ventured offshore to Hawaii and Fiji.
After sustaining serious damage during a heavy, southeasterly gale, C.A. Thayer’s lumber trade days ended and she entered the salmon trade.
Each April from 1912 to 1924 C.A. Thayer hauled 28-foot gill-net boats
bundles of barrel staves and tons of salt from San Francisco to Western Alaska; returning each September her hold stacked with barrels of salted salmon
Max Stern a reporter for the San Francisco Newspaper The Daily News
documented one of these journeys aboard the C.A. Thayer. His reports ultimately changed labor laws.
When World War I broke out, C.A. Thayer carried Northwest fir
and Mendocino redwood to Australia.
From 1925-1930 C.A. Thayer made yearly voyages from Poulsbo, Washington to the Bering Sea codfishing waters (off the Alaskan coast).
In addition to supplies she carried upwards of thirty men north.
After a decade-long, Depression-era lay-up in Lake Union, Seattle,
the U.S. Army purchased C.A. Thayer from J.E. Shields (a prominent Seattle codfisherman). The Army removed her masts and used the ship as an ammunition barge in British Columbia.
After World War II, Shields bought his ship back from the Army, fitted her with masts once again and returned her to cod fishing.
With her final voyage in 1950 C.A. Thayer entered the history books
as the last commercial sailing vessel to operate on the West Coast.
The State of California purchased C.A. Thayer in 1957 and she was ultimately transferred to the National Park Service in 1978 designated a National Historic Landmark in 1984