Lily has participated in the performing arts for much of her life. “I’ve been involved in community theater for about 30 years.”
She resides in Forest Hills, Queens. There she is in the ensemble at the Drama and Singers chapter of the Women’s Club of Forest Hills. It was there that she first met musical director and Lambs Club member, Treasurer Peter Dizozza. She said of this Lambs member: “Peter’s the best musical director you could ever meet, and nurturing and patient, too.” She added, “He makes you feel that you can achieve things that you do not expect yourself to be able to do.”
In Forest Hills, Lily has volunteered for more than a decade at the Garden Players, which offers a musical theatre program for kids. It teaches improvisation, movement, vocal technique and other aspects of performance, which provides training for the students to pursue theater through their lives in the future. The organization is more than eight decades old. It is under the direction of Betina Hershey, who in addition to teaching swing dancing in Japan, has performed on the international tour of West Side Story and the national tour of Phantom of the Opera.
Lily has acted in a television series on Amazon Prime called The Other F Word about forty-something or fifty-something women. The comedy is described on the Internet Movie Database as being about a “group of friends who find that the angst of raising kids may be nothing compared to the angst of starting over after they are grown.” Lily has also been a model in publications such as JCPenney and Sears catalogs in the United States South America.
Her father was the Ambassador of Chile to the country of Ecuador, and her mother was an administrative attaché there. During the time that her parents lived in Ecuador, Lily was born. She attended elementary school in Spain at a convent that she recalls was very regimented. She went on to attend school in Switzerland from ages 14 to 16. She said she has found it easy to make friends, as one moves in different countries. She returned to Ecuador, where she earned her law degree at Universidad Laica Vicente Rocafuerte. She went on to practice law in a bank in Guayaquil, Ecuador. She later traveled to New York where she studied English for six months, before returning to the bank in Ecuador. She married her husband, a Croatian-American who is a business executive. They have a son in law school. They also have a daughter who is a sophomore at Princeton University, who has acted in musical theater and is adept at speech and debating.
Lily’s acting and singing career spans two continents. She performed in musicals in Ecuador, where she was also part of her university a cappella choir. One of the members of the university choir was León Roldós Aguilera, who went on to become vice president of Ecuador from 1981 to 1984.
Lily enjoys attending Off-Broadway shows at venues such as Symphony Space. She said, “You connect with the performers there.” She saw Hamilton when it was still at the Public Theater, which she says was unique in that “the show inspires you to learn about the history after you see it.”
She became familiar with The Lambs, when Peter Dizozza brought her to the Club one night where she was introduced to the Shepherd of the Lambs, Marc Baron there.
–written by Gary Shapiro
