Odalys Nanin

Angela Brinskele interviews Odalys Nanin, founder and producing artistic director of Macha Theatre Company. Macha stands for Mujeres Advancing Culture, History, and Art. Nanin never owned the theater on Kings Road. With a City of West Hollywood grant for her play Skin of Honey, she arranged to rent the Globe Playhouse from Thad Taylor, who died before her run began. She tracked down the landlord, signed a ten-year lease, and remodeled. Macha opened in April 2007 with Skin of Honey and lasted almost eleven years. Al Pacino rehearsed there for three months and came to her opening night. When the corner was sold and the new owners doubled the rent, she moved out in 24 hours.

Nanin came from Cuba on the Freedom Flights and grew up in Brooklyn and New Jersey. She has written ten plays and produces and directs them, often starring as well. Her first, Lovestruck (1997), was co-written with Marie Barrientos. After a performance at the Hudson Theatre an audience member asked if she was gay, and she came out publicly by answering yes. Garbo’s Cuban Lover opened four days after 9/11 to a full house.

She describes researching Greta Garbo and Mercedes de Acosta, Frida Kahlo’s last week for Frida, Stroke of Passion, and Marilyn Monroe for Marilyn, My Secret. Someone once told her nobody would come to Latina plays, and full houses for Lovestruck and her lesbian Blood Wedding proved that person wrong. She used the theater’s trap door in Lavender Love, a time-travel play that surfaces at the Garden of Allah. After Macha she produced at Casa 0101 in Boyle Heights for seven years. She closes with advice for young Latina lesbians in theater and the story of coming out to her parents in a letter.