"2010! Barack Obama is president. Apple releases the very first iPad. The Affordable Care Act is passed! And Betty White becomes the oldest person to host SNL thanks to the Facebook campaign 'Betty White to host SNL (please?).' "

I'll leave it to historians to debate the point, but I wouldn't be surprised if future generations saw that last item as the most significant event of the batch listed by Lin at the play's outset. It could be regarded as the first major signal that, as the playwright/performer observes, this particular social media platform was expanding into something way beyond being simply a means for connecting with people you knew, or people who knew people you knew (Remember Friendster?).

"This was before Facebook messenger, before the timeline, before it became the platform for offensive uncles everywhere."

Equipped with a BFA in Drama from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, Lin was optimistic about a successful career as an actor and a future that's "an endless parade of late nights, hot dates, and hangovers that go away after one Advil," but a year later, her only steady acting gig was appearing interested in helping customers during her full-time employment at a SoHo J.Crew.

And then came a Facebook message from a stranger named John Chan: "Please, please let me know if you were born in Manchester, England. This is very important. Thank you."

Rachel Lin was indeed born in Manchester, the city where her Chinese mother May, a survivor of Mao Ze Dong's Cultural Revolution, migrated to, thanks to the less restrictive policies of his successor.

Through Lin's engaging storytelling and 10-year-old video clips of an interview with her mother taken for "one of those Anna Deavere Smith documentary theater things," we learn that May divorced Lin's father shortly after she was born and they eventually relocated to live with family in New York, overextending a holiday visa.

From ages 8 to 18, Lin lived in Brooklyn undocumented. Though always feeling the love and protection of the city's Chinese community, she describes her youthful adjustments to looking different from the other kids in school while growing up in a new culture and eventually taking on a myriad of survival jobs while pursuing a career in a profession with limited opportunities for Asians ("Hi, I'm reading for the role of the Canal Street bag lady."). Meanwhile, the Facebook messages from John Chan keep coming, each displaying his knowledge of specifics of Rachel's history.

Though Dear John deals with emotional topics like government oppression, the feeling of abandonment, and the development of a personal identity in a country where you don't officially exist, under Tara Elliott's direction of the world premiere production at HERE Arts Center, the mood is always light and entertaining, with designer Ein Kim's projections adding punchlines to the proceedings and bits of voluntary audience participation that can turn silly, depending on the hamminess of the participants.

Though the current political issues regarding immigration into America are never brought up, the undocumented experience is an undeniable subtext to the narrative. Particularly in a city like New York, the most culturally diverse spot on the planet, the freedoms we enjoy in America sometimes need to protected by ethnic communities taking care of their most vulnerable.