Illusions transformed a shy young girl into a grand stage presence.

That’s the back story of Illusionaire’s Lyn Dillies, who presents the first show in the 2009-10 season of the Annette Howell Turner Center for the Arts’ Presenter Series Tuesday night.

Dillies has been a professional illusionist for years. She has performed in the Lincoln Center and worked across the nation. Her illusions have included an election-year trick of making the GOP Elephant and Democratic Donkey appear out of thin air. She has incorporated illusions with symphonic orchestra music. 

For the Valdosta performance, Dillies says she is bringing a very family-friendly, high-energy show to town, similar to the type of an illusion show audiences might see in New York or Las Vegas.

Yet before the bright lights and the big tricks, Dillies describes herself as a shy, 12-year-old child. Until, she saw the television show “The Magician,” starring Bill Bixby as a magic man who fights crime.

“The Magician” inspired her to visit a magic shop. She purchased tricks then she practiced these tricks relentlessly. She enjoyed the method of practicing tricks after school.

She enjoyed even more presenting the tricks to her family and friends. She performed tricks on the school bus, in between classes. She even traveled door to door, performing magic tricks for her neighbors.

“It was the coolest thing. So empowering,” Dillies says in a phone interview with The Valdosta Daily Times. “It brought me out of my shell and into society.”

She had strong support from her family. With a master-electrician father and a cabinet-making uncle, Dillies had an edge in creating newer, bigger magic props. Her mother took her everywhere to perform.

Her childhood interest became her passion and then her career. She had entered a world almost exclusively dominated by men, a career where women are typically smiling assistants.

“I didn’t think about it when I started, I was so driven,” Dillies says. “Then I slowly realized the novelty of it of being one of the only female illusionists in the world. I looked at it as a challenge.”

The only time her gender has been a hindrance has been scheduling shows in the corporate world.

“I’ve never let it stop me,” she says. “But I’ve never hidden behind my gender either. Hopefully, I’ve paved the way for future young girls that anything is possible.”

She is a member of numerous magician and illusionist societies and guilds, all dominated by men. Yet, her fellow illusionists have mostly been accepting of her. There is a mutual respect. The Society of American Magicians has named her “America’s premier female illusionist.”

She explains the difference between a magician and an illusionist. “An illusionist has to be a magician but has expanded into the realm of larger effects, but a magician isn’t necessarily an illusionist.”