Sea Turtles - The Play

SAN FRANCISCO, October 15, 2012 – GenerationTheatre will stage its original play, Sea Turtles, on two weekends from November 2 to November 11, 2012 at the Southside Theatre, at Fort Mason Center. Curtain time is 8:00pm on Friday and Saturday and 3:00pm on Saturday and Sunday. 


With its all-woman cast, GenerationTheatre’s Sea Turtles – a comedy based on a true story -fulfills the local theater company’s triple mission:  bring new stage works to life, offer high quality theater to the San Francisco Bay area community, and appeal to a multi-generational audience. 

In July 2012, François Hollande, President of the French Republic, made long overdue apologies for the 1942 deportation of Jews by the French authorities. In Sea Turtles, French-born author and director David Valayre builds on the tribulations of his mother, grandmother and aunts, Berber Jews from the mountains of North Africa, who emigrated from Tunis to Paris at the worst possible time: 1938. “They avoided deportation by escaping occupied Paris and clandestinely returning to Tunisia with passports bearing Arab names ‘officially forged’ by the Tunisian consulate,” says Valayre.  Sea Turtles is about the wanderings of such women between Tunis and Paris over the second half of the Twentieth Century. “Sea Turtles is a story of love given and love denied” says Valayre, “and, fortunately, it is a comedy.”

The women of Sea Turtles are looking for a beach they lost or never knew “just as we 18-year olds were looking for a beach under the cobblestones of chaotic 1968 Paris,” says Valayre.  They are searching for their own identity.  “Call your brothers by their French names,” says one of the characters, “David, Salomon, those are your father’s choices. We’re in France now; we don’t want to stand out.  From now on, it’s Clovis and Charlemagne.” 

Sea Turtles, written and directed by Roland David Valayre, interpreted by Anna Andersen, Cheryl Cleary, Lisa Drostova, Allison Fenner, Joanne Grimm, Raymonde McCoy and Andrea Satin.

November 2-11, 2012 at the Southside Theatre, Fort Mason Center, Bldg D, San Francisco
Information: Tel. 415-800-4464
Ticket Prices:  $35 - $20; school and group rates upon request

Generation Theatre is a non-profit ensemble company, which grew from the friendship of a group of theater students at the Berkeley Rep’.  The troupe enjoys tackling a diversity of subjects and styles in original productions, from a father’s introspective search for love (4Soldiers) to the magical revisiting of relationships (DiTCH), or the fictional prolongation of Kafka’s life (BooKKeepers) or of an old theater (Audition).
Press contacts: Judy Curtis | SIPR for GenerationTheatre – judy@sipr.com - T. (650) 274 1509

Contact Information

R. David Valayre

Artistic Director

GenerationTheatre

info@generationtheatre.com