The following excerpt is posted with the author's permission.

(More Theatre Games for Young Performers, by Suzi Zimmerman; Meriwether Publishing, Ltd., Colorado Springs, CO; 2004)

Diane Matson
Professional Actress and Musician
Seattle, Washington

     A few years ago, I owned a website dedicated to helping actors learn the finer point of breaking into professional acting here in Dallas. There were a lot of businesses preying on young, eager actors, and I wanted to help them weed out the bad guys. My main focus was in safe networking and in writing and soliciting articles that would make the journey less dangerous and its travellors more educated. In my research, I came across a hilarious poem about scams, and since I was interested in helping actors to avoid them (scams), it caught my attention. I emailed the person who sent it to me, and he emailed the person who sent it to him. Eventually, I was put in touch with the poem’s author, Diane Matson.

     We started communicating by email, and it was obvious that actress was a genuinely good person. I was contacting her hoping to use her poem, but by the time we finished our first round of emails, she had agreed to write the entire article. She was one of these “anything you need” people – “Anything!”

     Even after the article landed on the site and was a huge success, Diane and I stayed in touch. She was in Seattle and I was in Dallas – two totally different markets. But, as actors, she and I seemed to face many of the same ups and downs. There were the dry spells, and then there were the days when you had your choice of jobs. It was nice to know that – even that far away – the business was basically the same. Dallas hadn’t reinvented the wheel or the acting industry.

     When I started writing this book, Diane was the first person I thought of to grace the pages of the “featured teachers and artists” sections. After all, she does it all. So I asked her, and without hesitation came that all-too-familiar reply. “Anything you need.”

     Diane Matson is a beautiful actress, but it doesn’t stop there. She is also a professional musician who plays a number of instruments, and she is a voice artist. This means she is often the voice you hear, but there is no face to go with it.

     She has had principal roles in over a dozen television and film titles, and her list of commercials, corporate videos, games, and theatre seems endless. She can communicate fluently in sign language, and she can speak several other languages very well; her list of mastered dialects is enormous. On top of that, she uses a teleprompter, can juggle, plays the piano, SCUBA dives, is an accomplished mime, and the list goes on. With all these skills and talents, is there room for more? Sure. There is always room for a little fun and games.

     “I enjoy Murder Mystery. Four people play, but three are out of the room so that cannot hear. The audience gives the remaining player a murder weapon you would never think of – like a Q-Tip. When the others return, he kills one of them with the murder weapon using as much detail as possible, so that the one being ‘killed’ can guess what it is. When he thinks he knows, he, in turn, kills the next player. This continues until fourth player is killed. Afterward, he may guess the weapon. By playing this, they learn to listen and communicate.” You can find more information on Murder Mystery by turning to activity on page 157.

     Diane likes improvisation activities because they teach young people to listen and to work with the flow of a scene – and they don’t take any preparation. “There are some people, though, who do not work well without pre-scripted dialog. They become uptight – they need a routine. When they are dealt something ‘unexpected,’ they can’t handle it.” The truth is, not only is theatre live – business and life are live. There will always be something unexpected. She warns, “When things go wrong – and they normally do at some point - improvisation gives you practice in smoothly carrying forward so that the audience either doesn’t know or doesn’t care. Games are good to grow by!”