An Israeli father reminisces about his four sons, each one a psychically wounded veteran of the Israel Defense Forces.
Is it fact or fiction?
In writer David Valayre’s new play “4Soldiers,” the answer is: both.
Valayre loosely based his two-character play on extensive interviews with Israeli military veterans conducted by Jerusalem psychiatrist Nathan Szaijnberg and published in his book “Reluctant Soldiers.”
The playwright knows Szaijnberg well, having helped edit the book in 2004. That’s when Valayre first got the idea of dramatizing the interviews.
“I told [Szaijnberg] it was fabulous material and fascinating to read,” Valayre recalls. “He was trying to understand how people survive in certain situations and how they are affected. The interviews showed how service in the army affected these people’s lives and their family relationships. I started working on it, and created a fictional father of four.”
“4Soldiers” premieres Saturday, Oct. 18 and runs for four performances over two weekends at the Garage in San Francisco.
In this production, Valayre himself stars as Uri, the world-weary kibbutznik. The character describes his sons’ encounters with war, terror and peacekeeping in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon. The play also explores their lives after the military, and how each coped with trauma.
Director Patrick Feigelson co-stars as Shimon, Uri’s friend and foil.
Rather than relating harrowing war stories, the play is told from the father Uri’s more detached point of view. While it touches on the various ongoing Middle East conflicts, “4Soldiers” eschews politics, focusing much more on the personal.
“My concern was not to create a play that would be a testimony of soldiers’ lives,” Valayre notes. “What interested me was what happens to families when the children face situations like that. I wanted to write about the emotional dimension of the situation in Israel.”
Though he has lived in the Bay Area since 1992, Valayre was born in Paris into a Jewish family. As a young man he worked a variety of theater and film jobs, from stagehand to sound engineer and film editor.
He lived on a kibbutz back in the 1970s, learning Hebrew and absorbing the culture. That left him with a reservoir of sympathy for Israelis.
“Anti-Israelis give Israel a horrible time and judge it on standards they never apply to other countries,” he says. “On the pro-Israel side, they can be slightly blinded, and not want to realize that Israelis are not superheroes. It’s a country like any other.”
Back in France, he produced and directed two cinematic shorts, “Greyhounds” and “Anamorphosis,” which were included in the Edinburgh Film Festival. French television later aired one of his full-length plays, which starred renowned French actress Isabelle Huppert.
In the early 1990s, Valayre moved to the United States from France to study law, eventually landing a job with a law firm in San Francisco. He now has dual citizenship.
A few years ago he left his law practice behind to devote all his energy to theater. He now teaches drama at the French American International School of San Francisco and also studies acting the Berkeley Rep School of Theatre.
Valayre is eager to have audiences see “4Soldiers,” and he feels that anyone — whether pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian — would get something out of the experience. However, he does have a word of caution to theatergoers.
“It’s not a pamphlet presenting solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” he warns. “Leave your preconceived ideas about the conflict at home. We’re not going to talk about that directly. Instead, you’re going to see a father talk about his sons.”
“4Soldiers” plays at 8 p.m. Saturdays and 3 p.m. Sundays through Oct. 26, at the Garage, 975 Howard St., S.F. Tickets: $25. Information: (415) 885-4006 or www.975howard.com.