How well do you know your parents — those know-nothings who raised and encouraged you, loving you the best they knew how?
Theater director May Adrales appreciates her parents much better today not simply because of their support during the ups-and-downs of a herky-jerky arts life. Her father, a surgeon, and her mother, a nurse, also serve as motivation.
“There was no other family that, quote-unquote, looked like us in the rural Virginia community where I grew up, and so my parents weren’t very talkative or outgoing,” Adrales said. “Then when I went as a young adult with them to the Philippines, I got a glimpse of two people that I felt like I’d never met. They were loquacious, confident, charismatic — the life of the party — and I wanted to know, where have these people been?”
Adrales’ mother was one of the inspirations for “The Heart Sellers,” Lloyd Suh’s comedy opening Thursday at the Guthrie Theater. Set in 1973, the one-act puts her in the mind, if not the shoes, of her mother when she was a new immigrant in America.
A wry comedy whose name puns on the 1965 Hart-Celler Act that overhauled the immigration system to prioritize skills and family ties while removing limits based on nationality, “Heart” was commissioned by Adrales while she was on staff at the Milwaukee Rep, where it premiered last year.
The play sprung out of conversations that Adrales and Suh had about their mothers’ respective journeys to America — Suh is a child of Korean immigrants who settled in Indiana.
“Every day that I rehearse this play or encounter it, I learn more about my parents,” Adrales said. “It offers a window into their uncertainty and anxiety — the loneliness, fear and isolation that comes with leaving your country and starting anew.”

Mirror of real lives
The action centers on Jane and Luna, two Asian immigrants who meet at a grocery store on Thanksgiving Day 1973. Both 23 and wearing the same Kmart coat while their medical resident husbands labor at work, they strike up a conversation that leads to sharing wine and dreams as they deal with a frozen turkey.