DIANA GLENN
After a decades-long career, Diana Glenn is finally treading the boards in her home city of Melbourne. Taking on a role in the new play, Arbus & West, her performance is a powerful imagining of a groundbreaking photographer.
The Aussie actor is taking on the role of an iconic photographer in Arbus & West.
Diana Glenn is pumped. Despite an acting career spanning over 20 years, she is about to perform in her first major professional role on the Melbourne stage. The part? Renowned American photographer Diane Arbus, in the world premiere of Arbus & West – a new work by playwright Stephen Sewell at the Arts Centre Melbourne.
Arbus & West focuses on one day in 1964, when Arbus went to Hollywood to interview and photograph ageing screen legend, Mae West, for Show magazine. At 71 years old, West was well past her prime – but reportedly desperate to still appear as seductive as she had always been. Drawing on these actual events, Sewell imagines the conversation and interaction that happened between the two women during their few hours together.
The fact that it is Glenn’s first time treading the boards in a major production in her home city is quite surprising, as the actor is a veteran of
numerous TV series such as The Slap and Underbelly. She’s also appeared in several films, including Oyster Farmer, where she starred alongside Hawaii Five- 0 alumnus Alex O’Loughlin.
To prepare for her new role, Glenn undertook meticulous research on Arbus – the poor little rich girl from New York City who grew up to become one of the 20th century’s most celebrated photographers.
“Mae West wanted the world to see her still as a sex symbol and for no- one to see her flaws, but Arbus [who had built a successful career photographing ‘ordinary’ people as well as ‘ freaks’] was constantly searching for the beauty in the raw, unguarded moment,” Glenn explains. “What they were reaching for were two very different things.”
When the story and photographs were published, West was horrified by the images of an ageing, arguably pathetic woman attempting to hold onto her sex appeal. “She felt she was being ridiculed,” says Glenn, “but Arbus didn’t set out to do that.”
The revealing images, Glenn says, focus on the chasm between what we present to the world and what we really are underneath – a theme even more relevant today in an illusionary world of Instagram, Facebook, cosmetic surgery and photo retouching/enhancement.
“The play is concerned with these two women on either side of the feminist viewpoint, coming together with their ideas of freedom, beauty and truth – and how they connect with each other,” says Glenn, who confesses to being “excited but terrified” at the thought of playing such an iconic figure.
At the age of 44, Glenn is only a few years older than Arbus was when she photographed West.
“I can identify with Diane’s spirit and her darkness,” says Glenn. “She suffered depression and chose to feel everything in life, even if it caused her pain. I think of myself as a positive person, but I have gone through stages where I have suffered depression and anxiety.”
At 48, seven years after photographing Mae West, Arbus famously took her own life alone in her New York apartment, leaving two daughters behind – one of whom was only 17. For Glenn, who has a four-year- old son, Massimo, with her former partner Vince Colosimo, this is the hardest facet of Arbus’ character to understand.
“Before I became a mother, I didn’t care about dying – I was indifferent,” Glenn states. “But everything changed when I had Massi. I became much more careful. It’s hard not to judge Diane for what she does when she chooses to take her life, but I have to find a way to be her that feels truthful.”
Glenn, who first performed in productions at high school, always wanted to be an actor, but studied languages at university to please her parents. When she was failed for non-attendance, she ran away to Paris – where she found herself living next door to Kate Beckinsale. “I got a tiny role in a film she was doing – and I totally fell in love with it.”
Back home in Melbourne, she acquired an agent after performing a monologue from the classic Australian play, Così. “I didn’t know how to be an actor,” she admits – but her expressive face and natural talent meant that she started getting work.
At 24, desperate for a role in the series du jour, The Secret Life of Us, she cut herself into a scene and sent it to the producers. To her utter astonishment, they cast her in 14 episodes as Jemima, a love interest for Samuel Johnson’s character.
That same enthusiastic spirit propelled her to LA to try her luck. “I have never hustled so hard in my life,” she says now. “I was in a couple of pilots but they didn’t get picked up. Living there is like having this perpetual carrot dangled in front of you, but despite that, I loved the experience of living and working in another country.”
But for now, it seems Glenn is in Australia for good. Her son Massimo has just started school and, engaged to entertainment industry identity Adam Zammit, she is planning an April wedding – just one week after Arbus & West finishes its run.
“I planned it that way so I won’t be able to spend much time obsessing about it all, I’ll be too busy with the play,” she says with a laugh.
• Arbus & West is on at the Arts Centre Melbourne, Fairfax Studio from 22 February to 30 March, 2019. mtc.com.au
“The play is concerned with these two women on either side of the feminist viewpoint.”
DIANA GLENN