The rituals of giving thanks tend to vary from culture to culture. From acts as small as completing a chore for a partner, to remembering a friend’s coffee order, to cooking family recipes for an ancestral table, displaying gratitude is a practice that reinforces our sense of belonging, especially as we navigate the often turbulent waters of becoming an adult and creating a found family.
In Lloyd Suh’s two-woman show The Heart Sellers, young immigrants Luna and Jane — both recently arrived in the U.S., Luna from the Philippines and Jane from South Korea— meet in a barren grocery store on a Thanksgiving evening, where the outgoing Luna invites the more reserved Jane to her home to celebrate their first Thanksgiving together.
But gratitude can be complicated in a world where everything comes with a price. Over warmed yams, bottles of wine, and a stubbornly frozen turkey, they pour out their hearts and weigh the costs and rewards of what they had to give up for the promise of a future in the U.S. Luna describes her first experience in America – visiting Disneyland on her honeymoon – with joy and excitement, but also notes that she and her husband couldn’t afford to actually go into the park. The sacrifices they made to get here are thrown into sharp relief as Luna describes taking photos from the parking lot, closer to the American Dream than she’d ever been, but still not quite able to reach it.
As the evening wears on, their friendship begins to blossom and the defensive emotional walls built by both women begin to fall away, revealing the frustrations they share and the experiences they both understand in ways no one else could. They find themselves imagining an elaborate “escape,” a fantasy of a perfect new community they can both belong in together. The home they imagine is defined by the ways each would express their gratitude for one another – a world in which they can be loved and appreciated for their true selves. Home is where the heart truly belongs, and Luna and Jane dream of giving one another a place they can always call home.
Autumnal Gratitude || Chuseok
In the fictional Jane’s very real homeland, Korea, Chuseok (秋夕 or 추석) or “Full Moon Day” is widely celebrated on the peninsula. The holiday is sometimes referred to as the “Korean Thanksgiving,” and is an opportunity for Koreans across the globe to give thanks to their ancestors by eating traditional foods, visiting home to spend time with loved ones and completing cultural ceremonies to bring blessings to the family.
The autumnal festival is celebrated on the 15th day of the eighth month of the Lunar cycle. This year the festival will run through October 5-8; Chuseok is October 6.
Similar to the Thanksgiving Day holiday in the U.S., there are certain dishes heavily associated with the holiday such as songpyeon, a half-moon shaped rice cake filled with various Korean culinary staples, jeon (전) a savory pancake, and the banchan (side dish) mainstay japchae (잡채).
Lloyd Suh’s The Heart Sellers is now running at Studio Theatre through November 2, 2025. Tickets are available at studiotheatre.org.
