January 14, 2025
by Kristen Nevarez Schweizer
Lloyd Suh’s The Heart Sellers is a real-time conversation between two lonely women. This play neglects conventional plot arcs and the expected ‘strong BIPOC female protagonist’ attributes for a nuanced exploration of a real immigrant experience and authentic human connection. This demure stance sets The Heart Sellers apart, so it’s no surprise it is ranked in the top ten most-produced 2024-25 American plays and received a San Diego premiere at the intimate North Coast Repertory Theatre.
The setting is Thanksgiving 1973, a holiday never before celebrated by two recently emigrated women. Luna (Marielle Young) from the Philippines and Jane (Jin Park) from South Korea—both solo while their husbands work night shifts—meet at the American supermarket and decide to cook a turkey at Luna’s apartment together. Over ninety minutes, polite conversation unfolds in a carefully calibrated dance of restraint and revelation.
The Heart Sellers real-time format mirrors the slow, painstaking process of cultural adaptation and self-reinvention. Luminous actress Jin Park magnificently commands pauses to carry the weight of the unspoken and unrealized. Her silence—pregnant with curiosity, regret, hope, and humor—pulls the heartstrings just as well as during her profound show-closing monologue. In a pre-show interview, Park reflects, “Jane has just come from Korea and is feeling lonely and frustrated because she’s both grateful for this opportunity but also trapped by it. It’s both. So I’m grateful Kat [Yen, director] set the tone of the room very solidly from the beginning by being honest and open. It allowed [Marielle and I] to feel safe to try things from the get-go.”
Filipina-American Marielle Young bears well the weight of the show’s telling. Her bustling entrance into the apartment crackles with contagious adrenaline as she nervously shows her American apartment to a guest for the first time. From singing a capella to deftly explaining (to herself and the modern, primarily Caucasian audience) the play’s title (mistranslating The Hart-Celler Act, which replaced quotas restricting immigration from Asia and Africa), Marielle Young’s earnest monologues are the engine of this production.
Young said, “I love the joy in this play. It’s about being seen and female friendship and connection and there is a lot of laughing, which I found refreshing. If [audiences] have ever taken a leap of faith on something and tried to explore parts of themselves bravely, they’ll relate to Luna.”
Audiences accustomed to more traditionally structured narratives must adjust their palette—like swapping bourbon for sake—to appreciate the quiet, deliberate lack of dramatic stakes. Building trust one sentence at a time (in the characters’ second language) sounds like a playwright’s writing exercise, but the theatrical dare is this play’s defining strength. It wouldn’t work on a stage any larger than NCR’s and I’d be interested to see this script again in a smaller setting with a diverse audience.
In this North Coast Repertory production, Suh, Yen, Park, and Young remind us that theater’s power often lies not in spectacle but in its ability to distill human experience into its most elemental forms: a conversation, a connection, and the courage to hope for more.
The Heart Sellers
By Lloyd Suh
North Coast Repertory Theatre
January 8 – February 2, 2025
