Lily Mercer(I)
- Actress
Lily Mercer is a multifaceted artist, having made her mark first as an actor, then as a director/producer, and finally embracing her secret love of writing. As an actor she has appeared in The Newsroom (2012), Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999), Kidnapped (2006) and Cashmere Mafia (2008), to list a few. On the big screen she was in the film And Then Came Love (2007) alongside Vanessa Williams, and The Brave One (2007) alongside Jodie Foster. She also performed Off-Broadway and in regional theatre productions across the country, including "Crimes of the Heart" (AZ), "Whose Life Is It Anyway?" (CA), "Taming of the Shrew" (AZ), "The Desk Set" (PA), "The Heidi Chronicles" (FL), and the Lily Tomlin one woman show "Search for Signs of Intelligence in the Universe" (AZ).
Passionate about new and original plays, Lily founded a small professional theater in Northern Arizona, Actors Repertory Theatre of Sedona (A.R.T.S.), with the mission of producing contemporary plays that celebrated the hero in all of us. She was the Producing Artistic Director there for three years and directed most of their 16 main stage productions, with extremely positive results. Directing and producing taught her the value of good storytelling, and because of that she still considers her experience in Sedona to be the turning point in her artistic life.
It was in Sedona where Lily started taking her writing "hobby" more seriously. In May of 2012 Lily received an M.F.A. from NYU/Tisch in Dramatic Writing, where she received the Charles Purpura Award for excellence in writing, and was a finalist for the Goldberg Prize with her full-length play, "Before a Fall". Since then she has become an award-winning screenwriter, an award-winning TV writer, a produced playwright and a published short story author.
In May of 2016, she was awarded the ISA (International Screenwriters Association) Fast Track Fellowship for her TV pilot, "No More Heroes." Soon after the same script received fifth place in the London competition, "Table Read My Screenplay". She is developing a series of TV movies about women entitled, "Lost Women of American History" and dedicating her life as an artist to changing the status quo for women.
Lily is a professional member of SAG-AFTRA and the Dramatist Guild.
Passionate about new and original plays, Lily founded a small professional theater in Northern Arizona, Actors Repertory Theatre of Sedona (A.R.T.S.), with the mission of producing contemporary plays that celebrated the hero in all of us. She was the Producing Artistic Director there for three years and directed most of their 16 main stage productions, with extremely positive results. Directing and producing taught her the value of good storytelling, and because of that she still considers her experience in Sedona to be the turning point in her artistic life.
It was in Sedona where Lily started taking her writing "hobby" more seriously. In May of 2012 Lily received an M.F.A. from NYU/Tisch in Dramatic Writing, where she received the Charles Purpura Award for excellence in writing, and was a finalist for the Goldberg Prize with her full-length play, "Before a Fall". Since then she has become an award-winning screenwriter, an award-winning TV writer, a produced playwright and a published short story author.
In May of 2016, she was awarded the ISA (International Screenwriters Association) Fast Track Fellowship for her TV pilot, "No More Heroes." Soon after the same script received fifth place in the London competition, "Table Read My Screenplay". She is developing a series of TV movies about women entitled, "Lost Women of American History" and dedicating her life as an artist to changing the status quo for women.
Lily is a professional member of SAG-AFTRA and the Dramatist Guild.
