Garbo's girlfriend.

Actress-writer Odalys Nanin celebrates Latin lesbians--like Greta Garbo's dashing lover Mercedes de Acosta 

Why would any sane writer-director-producer-actor choose a career in the demographically challenged arena of lesbian theater? "I have stories that I want to write," answers Odalys Nanin, the Cuban-born creator of the MACHA Theatre Company of Los Angeles. "And if somebody comes in and says that I ought to soften the lesbianism so that it's more for everyone, more commercial, I go, `No. I'm not that kind of a writer.'"

Nanin has committed to creating not just plays about lesbians but about women of color in particular. That's why she came up with her company's moniker: "MACHA stands for Mujeres Advancing Culture, History, and Art," she says.

"There's no venue" for such an effort, Nanin concedes. "It doesn't exist." However, if anyone can crack the secret code, bet on Nanin, with her single-minded, passionate commitment. "If I want to write about what I'm passionate about, and there is no venue for it, then I have to create one."

Her last production was an all-female version of Federico Garcia Lorca's Blood Wedding. Her latest piece, Garbo's Cuban Lover, is one she wrote herself. Running through October 28 at the Ventura Court Theatre in Los Angeles's Studio City, the drama explores the real-life love affair between the writer-poet Mercedes de Acosta and the enigmatic actress Greta Garbo. Using actual passages from letters exchanged by the two secret lovers as well as those written by another De Acosta conquest, Marlene Dietrich, the play is told from De Acosta's perspective as performed by Nanin.

Irresistibly drawn to the story--"It's about passion; it's about obsession," she exclaims--Nanin also found in De Acosta a kindred spirit. "There are so many different things I find in common with this woman. She was a Pisces and I'm a Pisces. Her father was Cuban and I'm Cuban. She was a writer. She was in Hollywood. And she was really a lesbian. She wasn't like a bi-girl who was curious, which was the in-style thing to do. She really wanted this kind of relationship."

With the credo "I can get any woman from any man," the sexually audacious De Acosta seduced not only the great Garbo but other prominent women of her day, including Sarah Bernhardt, Isadora Duncan, and Eva Le Gallienne. For the currently single Nanin, however, confronting her sexuality was not as easy. "I was 30 when I came out," she says. "In the beginning, I was like, `I'm straight. Well, maybe I'm not that straight. Maybe I'm bisexual,' and then I said, `You know what? Who am I fooling? I need to be who I really am.'"

Kaye is a producer for E! Entertainment Television and the Style Network.