About Diane Tyler

From an early age, I had a strong affinity for what I guess people would call, “the arts.” At the age of 5, I started singing with my Sunday School group. I wasn’t a great singer but for some reason they had me standing next to the soloist, which was pretty cool and pleased my parents.

The first time I tried my hand at writing and directing was in first or second grade when I concocted a one-act piece about a family of ducks. The only thing I remember about that experience was that I spent in inordinate amount of time constructing a “house” for the ducks out of posterboard, and that it kept falling apart when I had all the “ducks” huddled inside it – (Oddly enough this was the beginning – and end – of my set design career…).

I was also very interested in drawing and painting – and one of my pictures – a bunch of circles and dots, as I recall – was hung in a temporary display of children’s art work in one of the museums in Chicago.

I have returned to my “artwork” over and over through the years, and I remember that being the “student helper” in my Junior High School art department got me through a particularly painful adolescent period – As it happens, I have continued to do what I call “craft art” in my “down periods” from acting (painting original, one-of-a-kind designs on glass and wood) and have had my work shown at the Juried Art Fairs in Rhinebeck, and New Paltz-Woodstock. My website – Tylercraftworks.com, is in the process of being “re-tooled” and should be back up again shortly. You will no doubt see that my obsession with circles and dots (the fancy folk call it “pointillism.”) has continued through the years.

By the time I hit high school, and after a brief and not terribly successful stint as a player of the piano, the clarinet and the oboe, I had decided I wanted to be a writer, and, more specifically, a poet. By the time I began college, I was invited to be the only student member of the Faculty Poetry Reading group at the University of Florida in Gainesville. I knew the trick would be to get out of Florida (which I did), head to New York City (which I did), and begin having the kind of life experiences one should have in order to actually have something of value to say (the jury is still out).

And then, something else happened: For the last term of my freshman year, I was looking for what we used to call a “crib course” – something that would fill out my class credits and be an “easy A” to augment my grade point. I saw something called “Oral Interpretation” in the syllabus, and I thought – Reading stuff in front of people? How hard could that be? It was a class designed for upper classmen, but through some kind of glitch, I was allowed in.

And I fell in love on the very first day – when the professor started talking about “breathing life into words.” The alchemy of creating life. And I suddenly knew what I wanted to do – after flirting with all these other artistic pursuits, (and returning to all of them, from time to time – with the notable exception of the clarinet and oboe) I wanted to act. I didn’t have to be a “star” or a celebrity. I just wanted to create life.