‘The Heart Sellers’ brings immigrant stories to Atlanta stage
On Halloween night in 1972, playwright Lloyd Suh’s mother was 23 and alone in her new apartment in Detroit. She was newly wed, new to America, knew no one and did not speak English.
She had just immigrated to the U.S. from South Korea alongside her husband, who was invited to work long hours as a medical resident under the 1965 Hart-Celler Act — legislation that opened the nation’s borders to skilled workers from Asia and nations previously barred or restricted by quotas.
She heard a knock at her front door.
When she opened it, children dressed like monsters startled her.
“Trick-or-treat,” the little monsters said.
She didn’t understand them.
She gave them some sticks of gum from her purse, closed the door, turned off the lights and hid in the dark for the rest of the night.
For most of his life, Suh remembered this story as “hilarious and cute.” But when he got older and began to understand the context — how lonely and terrified his mother must have been, and how tumultuous the era was both in her new American home and the one she left behind in South Korea — his eyes widened.
“As I zoomed out, I realized no, this is a horrifying story,” Suh recalled.
His mother’s Halloween story came to mind in 2019 when Suh began contemplating a new play about the Hart-Celler Act, which would eventually become “The Heart Sellers,” a tender two-woman comedy on stage at Horizon Theatre in Atlanta through Nov. 9.
Directed by Michelle Chan, “The Heart Sellers” centers on two 23-year-old women: Luna (Jenine Florence Jacinto), a recent immigrant from the Philippines, and Jane (Michelle Pokopac), a recent immigrant from South Korea, who move to the U.S. in 1973 alongside their medical resident husbands.
The two women are adrift and isolated, spending much of their time confined to humble apartments while their husbands work long hours. They occupy themselves at home by listening to the radio (where Richard Nixon denies he’s a crook) or watching Jane Fonda on television (Jane Americanizes her Korean name after watching the magnetic actor). Occasionally, they each sneak away to the aisles of Kmart to gawk at its wild assortment of capitalist excesses neither of them can yet afford.
Jane and Luna notice each other one day at a grocery store where Luna is buying a turkey for Thanksgiving. Though strangers, they decide to spend the holiday together at Luna’s apartment while their husbands are at work. The two awkwardly try to open themselves up to new friendship while wrestling with how to cook a frozen-solid turkey.
Luna is spunky. She talks at a rapid clip, dances as she moves about the kitchen and has the exuberance of a toddler. Jane, on the other hand, starts off measured, guarded, refined. But as the night progresses, and some wine lubricates their nerves, the two grow more vulnerable in their personal disclosures. A warm bond builds between them. They connect over yams (a staple in both their cultures) and how America smells different in the rain.
Simultaneously humorous and poignant, with plenty of 1970s cultural references, the play illuminates the sadder parts of being one of “the lucky ones” to come to America.
A play that resonates
Pokopac, an Atlanta-based actor, said playing the role of Jane has allowed her to connect with her own mother’s experiences as a first-generation immigrant.
“(Jane) is like my mom to a tee,” she said.
Pokopac’s mother immigrated to the U.S. in 1979 to be with an American man she had met at home in South Korea. They had maintained a four-year, long-distance relationship as romantic pen pals before she moved to America, to a small town near Akron, Ohio, where her football-loving, cussing, Midwestern in-laws were completely foreign to her.
“It was definitely a culture shock for her,” Pokopac said. “… I’ve been able to bring (her experiences) to the rehearsal room to help craft Jane … This play has been really cathartic.”
Like Suh and Pokopac, director Chan is also the child of a first-generation immigrant. Her mother immigrated to the U.S. from Taiwan in the early ’90s to join family who had already settled in Connecticut; her father immigrated from Hong Kong on a student visa around the same time.
Nearly everyone who worked to produce “The Heart Sellers” at Horizon Theatre connected with the material.
“Everyone in the room has experienced what these characters are talking about, in our own right,” Chan said. “Every time we read a scene, new memories would come up — things our parents told us, or things we’d lived through ourselves … There was a lot of laughter, sometimes tears.”
On the very first day of rehearsal, Pokopac was late because she was harassed by a racist neighbor on her way to the theater. The experience reminded Pokopac that while the play is rooted in history, it is also timeless in relevance.
Chan hopes the play resonates with the audience, too.
“What moves me most,” she said, “is when people come up after the show and say, ‘That’s my mom,’ or ‘That’s my grandmother.’ It’s not just an Asian story. It’s an American story.”
Suh’s Trilogy
The story also fits into Suh’s overall body of work. “The Heart Sellers” joins two other plays in a trilogy exploring Asian immigration history.
His 2018 play “The Chinese Lady,” which was staged at the Alliance Theatre’s Hertz Stage in 2024, takes place in the 1830s and explores the life of Afong Moy, the first Chinese woman to set foot in the U.S. Moy was put on stage as an exotic display for Americans to watch as she performed daily routines, such as eating with chopsticks.
His 2022 play “The Far Country,” which has not yet been staged in Atlanta, takes place from 1909-1930 on Angel Island — dubbed “Ellis Island of the West” — in the wake of the Chinese Exclusion Act, a federal law that banned Chinese laborers from immigrating to the U.S. The act paved the way for the National Origins Formula, which established quotas for immigration based on nationality.
The Hart-Celler Act of 1965 abolished the quotas and opened the borders to skilled laborers.
Thus, “The Far Country” and “The Heart Sellers” form “two legislative bookends that completely informed every aspect of life for Asian Americans,” Suh said.
Of the trio, “The Heart Sellers” is the most personal and intimate. It is never bogged down in national policy, but focuses on the small, human and comedic moments that help two women find friendship in a foreign land.
“They didn’t think of themselves as pioneers,” Suh said of women like Jane, Luna and his own mother. “They were just trying to make a life. But that’s what makes them extraordinary.”
As the lights fades on Luna and Jane at the end of “The Heart Sellers,” they hug side by side on the couch. Their laughter and vulnerability linger — a quiet reminder that connection, even between strangers, can be its own kind of home.
If you go
“The Heart Sellers.” Horizon Theatre Company. 1083 Austin Ave. NE, Atlanta. Tickets start at $40. horizontheatre.com/plays/the-heart-sellers.
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