Lyn Dillies: ‘I just love using my magic to make a difference’

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The message on Lyn Dillies’ website is “It’s all about making a difference.”

And she walks it like she talks it. As an entertainer, an educator, an activist, and a volunteer, this Westport resident is touching a variety of lives in a variety of ways — and she’s garnering some significant acclaim and recognition for it.

The once shy 12-year-old girl being bullied at school has grown into one of the most accomplished illusionists in America. And her efforts to improve the lives of others goes far beyond the stage.

In 2013, Dillies’ world-class mastery of magic and illusion made her the first female recipient of a Milbourne Christopher Award from the Society of American Magicians, the industry’s equivalent of an Academy Award. In 2009, her magic talents earned her the International Magicians Society’s Merlin Award as Female Illusionist of the Year. She has also earned awards from the Dove Foundation for Family Programming in 2005, and a Parent’s Choice Award that same year.

Since the COVID pandemic has subsided, Dillies is presenting her illusion performances once or twice a week. While she entertains in performing arts centers and theaters from coast to coast, her resume includes three shows at the esteemed Lincoln Center in Washington.

Dillies is also responsible for the book and DVD, “Learn Magic With Lyn,” which were released in 2005.

But Dillies’ contributions aren’t only in the spotlight. Last July, her efforts to help eradicate hunger in the South Coast resulted in her receiving the Global Goals Galvanizer Award from the Community Collaborative, a nonprofit organization based in New Bedford that helps proliferate the Global Goals priorities which were created by the United Nations’ General Assembly in 2015. Dillies was honored for contributing to the U.N.’s aim of putting an end to hunger.

But that extension of philanthropy wasn’t something she had planned for.

During COVID, Dillies found herself devoting her energies to the Smith Mills Congregational Church in Dartmouth, teaming with her cousin, Scott Stubbs, and other volunteers to form Dartmouth United Outreach, a nonprofit group that distributes food and amenities such as toilet paper to local seniors. 

Using the touring truck she ordinarily uses to transport her stage set and props for her magic performances, Dillies began making runs throughout the community, and she eventually became the director of the organization. The group’s overflow of food recipients eventually warranted that they had to team up with the YMCA of South Coast’s “Full Plate Project,” which hosts a food pantry every Tuesday afternoon. Dillies is still involved with the organization.

Born and raised in New Bedford, Dillies sees her magic talents as something else that can be used to benefit others. Since 2008, she has been at the helm of “Your Vote is Magic,” an educational program she presents to high school youth, using magic to instruct and inspire audiences in the civic virtues of voting. The non-partisan presentation has taken her to schools in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Hampshire. She also performs the show for people of all ages. On Oct. 25th, she will be performing “Your Vote is Magic” to seniors at GNB Voc-Tech High School during the daytime, followed by a free public performance open to the public at 6:30 p.m. in the school’s auditorium.

In 1999, Dillies’ love of music was crafted into “Magic at the Symphony,” a fusion of music and illusion that has inspired performances throughout America, backed by symphonies in each of the cities she performs at. To date, she has done more than two dozen of these performances, including shows with the Dallas Symphony, the Utah Symphony and the San Diego Symphony.

Today, Dillies’ world-class talent has her in the top tier of illusionists in the nation. Beginning at the age of 12, with the influence and encouragement of her family, she overcame her youthful shyness by doing magic tricks at school as well as going door-to-door in her neighborhood. While she hated school, she loved performing magic. And she was good at it. One of her early catalysts was the TV show, “The Magician,” starring Bill Bixby, based on a character who solves crime by using magic. But Dillies also gives much credit to the virtuous role models in her family, including her father introducing her to politics and her grandfather teaching her to play the violin.

Dillies says she is inspired by inspiring others to follow their personal “magic.” She talked with The New Bedford Light about her success as an illusionist, the positive influences of her family, her diverse projects, and making a lifetime of giving “hope” to others.

New Bedford Light: You’ve had such an extraordinary life. You wear many hats. Where does that drive come from?

Lyn Dillies: I really think it boils down to my drive coming from the magic that I have in my heart, to use the gift that I’ve been blessed with — to bring joy and wonder to as many people as possible. We live in a fast-paced world, people can get information in a second, and that’s the magic of technology. And kids are growing up with it at such a young age, and yet when they see my show they sit on the edge of their seat, in the experience of awe and wonder and they want to believe that magic is really happening. And then you’ve got the adults and they want to experience what it’s like to be a little kid again and have that wonder. And I think more than ever people need to believe in something these days, something bigger than we are and they need to escape for a while from the craziness in the world. And I really think that that drive keeps me going. I never take any of that for granted. I pinch myself repeatedly when I’m performing. I am so fortunate to be able to live my dream and bring such joy to people.

NBL: How did “It’s all about making a difference” become a motto for you?

LD: I realized as my career evolved that it really had a far-ranging impact, more than I could ever envision. The letters from the fans, the emails from folks about what it meant to see someone onstage following their dream in a male-dominated field. So I love being able to inspire young girls to pursue a career in a male-dominated field. When I give a talk to young people I always let them know that we’re all born with a gift inside of us to share with the world and make it a better place. My gift happens to be magic, but think of the impact a teacher can make, or a medical researcher trying to find a cure for cancer. So I’m hoping my show instills that message to become the best you can be, to believe in the magic of yourself and your dream will come true.

Another aspect of my show is the impact that it can have on different ages of folks. For instance, one of my favorite memories that happened recently really — after a show a grandfather came up to me during my Meet & Greet, and he had his granddaughter with him, and with tears in his eyes he thanked me for giving them an experience together that his granddaughter would treasure. They shared that together. It doesn’t get better than that.

NBL: Your introduction to magic came at the age of 12. Could you talk about that experience and how you got inspired?

LD: As a young girl I was extremely shy. I was bullied and I really hated going to school. I hated it. When I was 12 years old there was this TV show called “The Magician” and it starred the late Bill Bixby, who was a magician who fought crime with his magic. It was really intriguing to me. Also, my great aunt and uncle had a wonderful jewelry store on Union Street in New Bedford, and across from their store was a joke shop and magic shop called “Cheap John’s Joke Shop.” So my dad and I would make the rounds as a weekly tradition. We’d go downtown, we’d have to have the milkshake at Poulos Pharmacy, visit Aunt Mary and Uncle Al, report on how school was going. I had him take me across the street to look at the magic … So he bought me a couple of little tricks and I was very diligent practicing. My grandfather, Kenneth Park, gave me a really strong practice ethic. He was a concert violinist, and he taught me how to play the violin. I did pretty well but then I was swept by magic, it took up all my time and interest. He taught me that if you want to be good at something you really have to practice. 

So I took these little tricks home and I was so serious about making sure they were perfect before I showed them to anybody. They call them “pocket tricks” because they’re so small. So I’d bring these tricks with me to school and I’d do magic on the school bus and in the lunchroom and in my classroom for Show & Tell. And it was so empowering. My shyness began to disappear. And that’s when I knew, something really clicked and I knew deep down inside of me, I said, “This is what I’m going to do with the rest of my life.” It just clicked.

It’s amazing. It’s all I’ve ever done. I was self-taught. I read a lot of magic books. I made most of my tricks back then. I would put these tricks in a cardboard box. When we moved to Westport from New Bedford we lived in a pretty nice neighborhood. I would literally walk around my neighborhood with this box of tricks and I would ring my neighbor’s door bell and ask if they wanted to see a show in their living room. I’d set up a little card table, do my act, pick up and move onto the next neighbor’s house. I was 13. That’s how driven I was. I would walk up and down Route 88 collecting aluminum cans to recycle for money to buy magic tricks.

NBL: Where do you learn your illusions for your performances? How do you select them and where do you rehearse them?

LD: I have different manufacturers around the country that I purchase them from. My go-to is called Wellington Enterprises in New York state. He’s built illusions for David Copperfield, he’s done a lot of Broadway productions and so forth. We collaborate on an idea and we come up with a prototype. It’s a back-and-forth process that can take months and months and months to come up with something that is going to be suitable to my vision. And then, once you get the illusion, then you have to keep working with it until you perfect it, or have it “show ready,” where it’s ready to fool people. But it won’t feel like wearing an old shoe until maybe a year or two after you’re performing it. It can take that long to really get comfortable with it and have it feel like everything flows. The audience really wouldn’t know the difference, but we do.

And then there’s the presentation. Most of the illusions that I perform are done to music, and then you have to work on the choreography. A lot of the music that I use has been composed specifically for the illusions. It’s like scoring an illusion to the music. I’ve worked with a couple of different composers, the most recent is Joe Carrier. He’s actually local. He’s brilliant. He’s done some really great pieces for me.

I always look at the show as a puzzle, I’m always tweaking it. … It’s tough being a perfectionist living in an imperfect world.

NBL: Do you create most of your illusions?

LD: Some are standards in the trade, but then I put my own spin on it. Others are original. I’ve thought of them and brought them to fruition, through that whole creative process, working with an illusion builder.

Illusion builders will customize an illusion. These things don’t just roll off an assembly line. They’re big, big props. And even if it’s a standard in the industry, chances are you don’t just call an illusion builder and ask for something. It’s built to order. When you want to do something it can take many months to bring it to fruition.

Probably about 70% of my show is original. It’s a combination of coming up with original presentations, presenting an illusion in a way that nobody else is doing, and things that I’ve come up with on my own that no one else is doing.

NBL: Where did the idea come from for “Magic at the Symphony?”

LD: I think it probably goes back to being surrounded by this wonderful music being played by my grandfather. I spent a lot of time at my grandfather’s house. Between him teaching me how to play the violin and listening to him practice — he would occasionally give me a lesson, and seeing him play. 

When the Boston Pops would come to our area, my grandfather was concertmaster. That’s how good he was. And so I really think that having that background had an impact on me. I always loved music anyway, but I thought, “What a great concept that would be, something different. To have a combination of the audio and the visual together to enhance each artform.” It took me months to choose the music. I wanted to make sure that every piece of music was complementary to the magic. The crescendos in the music match the crescendos in the illusion, so it would be really exciting for the audience to watch. It took a long time.

We hadn’t done it before so I rented out — I think it was New Bedford High School — and we played the taped music and then I performed the illusions with the taped music. The idea was to have my symphony manager from New York shop the idea around to different symphonies around the country to sell them on the concept. And finally — it was out of the blue — this conductor and music director from “The Little Orchestra,” which is a very prestigious orchestra in New York City … he loved the idea. It was very theatrical. He said, “Let’s do it!” So that’s how I got to play at Lincoln Center. We had two sold-out performances, and it holds 3,200 people.

NBL: Do you have any idols in or outside of the magic industry?

LD:  I do. My biggest idol in magic would be Doug Henning. And Doug Henning came on the magic scene in the late 1970s and early ‘80s. He had a very theatrical style about him, a very warm and engaging presence, a beautiful personality. He invited the audience into his world of magic. That really resonated with me. I loved how he was breaking down all of these barriers between himself and the audience, and that’s how I aspire to be like.

We’re all in this together. Let’s have a wonderful time sharing it all together. And the audience feels that. He was my idol in magic.

My other idols are family members that have had to overcome a lot of adversity — an aunt that was in a terrible car accident. The doctors told her she would never walk again but she ended up walking and being fairly independent. She was definitely a role model for me.

Anybody that’s very passionate about their art. Celine Dion for example, she’s an idol for me because she brings such passion to her performances, and the audience feels that.

NBL: What were the origins of “Your Vote is Magic?” Do you consider it a success?

LD: It’s definitely a success. So the origin of “Your Vote is Magic” came about because my father, Calvin Dillies, was very involved in politics. He never ran for office but he ran a lot of campaigns. And as a young girl I would tag along with him and hold campaign signs and scout out locations for signs, and attend some of the political functions and so forth. And my dad taught me about the importance of voting and that every vote mattered. And my father also taught me that people working together can create change. He witnessed evidence of that during the Civil Rights movement.

So I lost my dad in 2005 to cancer. My dad played a big role in my career so it was a huge loss. In 2007 the presidential election for ’08 was gearing up and it was going to be potentially historic. John McCain was running against Barack Obama, and I kept thinking of my father. And then I had this lightning bolt brainstorm of a magnificent illusion that I could perform that would deliver a visual message about the importance of voting. And the idea was to magically make the two mascots appear — the donkey and the elephant. 

So that’s what I ended up doing. That was the catalyst for my mission. I had a public service campaign, I had a voter rally happening and the illusion was the finale. And then what took place in those three minutes — that took almost a year to prepare for, training the animals, engineering the illusion and so forth — it was a monumental feat.

The illusion was a success and then eventually I wrote a book about the experience with an overview of voting history: “Your Vote is Magic: How A Donkey, An Elephant, and An Illusionist are Making Voters Appear.” So that came out in 2012, but I knew I had a lot more to do with my mission so I put together an assembly combining my magic with a Power Point presentation that I can do for high schools and teach these young people of the importance of voting in a visual way, and use the magic as the hook.

The magic plays an important role in the program. It’s not just eye candy, it’s part of the messaging. I really tie some of these illusions together with the educational components — voting history, the women’s suffrage movement, why they need to vote, underscoring the fact that every vote matters, showing examples of close elections. I have veterans on camera talking to the kids about the fact that they have sacrificed so much for our everyday freedom, and one of those freedoms is the right to vote. And it’s really important and they have an important voice. 

So it’s very comprehensive and the magic is part of the visual element to it. So it really, really clicks with these kids. They’re on the edge of their seats, riveted, and they really get it.

I also offer, for any high school senior who attends the assembly, an essay contest called “What Voting Means to Me,” and after they see my performance they can go online to my website and they can submit an essay. And the essays are reviewed at the end of the year by the local League of Women Voters and then the winner receives a Calvin Dillies Scholarship in honor of my dad.

The teachers and administrators see the value in it and they think it’s pretty cool and unique. It’s something so refreshing and different for these kids. I just want to let them know “You guys have an important voice and use it wisely. Be an educated voter as well.” It’s totally non-partisan.

NBL: How did you get involved in Dartmouth United Outreach? How did it grow and why have you stayed with it?

LD: So here we are in 2020, right before the pandemic, and I had just lost my mother — we were inseparable, she was my universe. I took care of her and we lived together. It was a really dark time and then to lose my show because of the pandemic, it was like falling into a black hole with no bottom. 

And then the universe stepped in. My cousin, Scott Stubbs, runs the Smith Mills Congregational Church in Dartmouth, and he found out that there were senior citizens living down the road in senior housing that were in quarantine and they needed food and toilet paper. My cousin said, “We have some toilet paper in storage, there’s a surplus of it and it would be great to be able to get some food together for them.”

So my cousin was battling Stage 4 cancer, and he still is years later, it’s pretty incredible. So I said “You can’t be going into stores and go shopping, so let me know how much you want to spend and I’ll go pick up some food.” That’s how it started, because the food was brought back to the church. A couple of volunteers got together, divided up the food and brought it to these seniors. And they were thrilled of course. 

And then the word started to leak out to other senior groups and before you know it we were forming a team of volunteers commandeering the entire church. There was food everywhere, every classroom, the church hall. Scott was doing a lot of fundraising. We were delivering food to about 350 seniors a week.

Because we were filling a gap for the Greater Boston Food Bank, catering to seniors, we started to be able to receive food from the Boston Food Bank. My truck, my touring truck which is quite big, I had to take it off the road to save money because I wasn’t performing. 

So then when we had access to all this food from the Boston Food Bank, I put my truck back on the road and was picking up food every week. Hundreds of loaves of bread from Gold Medal Flour in Fall River. We must have had a team of 20 volunteers that would put all this food together, unload it from my truck, we would take all these pallets of food, separate it and sterilize it, put it in bags or boxes. We started with a drive up. Cars would drive through the parking lot at the church, and this thing just took off like lightning. We had a couple of hundred cars coming through each week, plus we were still delivering to all of the seniors every week as well. It was unbelievable.

And then in December of 2020, my cousin Scott, he’s pretty handy with woodworking, he took the wooden pallets that the food would come on and he crafted them into wooden Christmas trees. Then we painted them and decorated them with lights, and we put up a beautiful display in the parking lot of the church, and as the cars came through they were surrounded by this beautiful display. That’s when we defined the spirit of DUO, the acronym for Dartmouth United Outreach. It’s us and it’s you, we’re in this together.

And it hit me that we were giving these people more than food. We’re giving them hope as well — the hope that their lives will someday get better. Hope is a reason to go on, so we were all thrown into this unimaginable crisis, people were quarantined in their homes, some dying of COVID, wearing masks everywhere. It was surreal.

We ran out of room at the church and they had to get back to their pre-school classes, so we needed another option to continue with the mission, which we were determined to do. We could not stop it because too many people needed us. And that’s when we partnered with the South Coast YMCA Full Plate Project in the fall of 2021. On the average we help 450 to 500 households on a Tuesday when we distribute the food. That equals about 1,200 to 1,500 people. That’s how much need is out there. That’s just the Dartmouth location. Wareham and Fall River are also very busy.

NBL: What are the personal rewards from helping others?

LD: What I love is being able to give back, because people have been good to me. My family and my friends have been so supportive through the years. My peers — I’ve had a remarkable, fulfilling, rewarding career and I just love to give back to people. It brings me so much joy and happiness and I feel like this new facet of my life is there for a reason, and I love the purity of it. 

That’s what is so beautiful about our mission. We all come from a different background, from all walks of life, and what brings us together is that we’re all there to bring hope to people. We really are in this together. It just feels good to give back and spread kindness. Sometimes people just need someone to listen to, to feel like they matter. It’s not rocket science. You don’t need a degree in social work. Just let your heart guide you to make people feel valued, and so I just love using my magic to make a difference.

NBL: What’s in your future? Do you have more kites to fly?

LD: Absolutely! One of the ways I challenge myself to keep it all going, to make sure that every show is the absolute best that it can be. I don’t leave anything on that stage. I really pride myself on that. And I want to pursue more opportunities with “Your Vote is Magic.” I’m very passionate about that. I want to make more symphony performances. I’d love to do some type of Broadway run. That’s on my bucket list for sure.

But I really just want to keep on going. It doesn’t matter if I’m performing on a stage as big as the Lincoln Center or if I’m performing for a senior center, it’s all just bringing joy to people. That’s the bottom line for me, that’s what drives me.

When I was a little girl I was so excited to open a box of cereal to discover the secret prize inside. And that anticipation, the build up, it would always be so disappointing. Like, “this is it? This is what all the hype was about?”

And that really bothered me a lot. And I think that idea of not wanting to disappoint people really stuck with me. And I’ve adapted that to my shows, my brand. I want people to always leave a show totally blown away and never disappointed. I really take pride in being the real deal, and being really authentic, and I think the audience feels that.

Sean McCarthy is a freelance writer and frequent contributor to The New Bedford Light.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.