Director's note:

"The Lie" is a text that speaks to how honest we can be, especially in intimate relationships—specifically when, how much, and if it is even permissible to lie at all. Although a first encounter with the text might give the impression that its main theme is marriage or infidelity, as the title itself suggests, the actual focus of the text, and consequently our production, is the phenomenon of lying.

We live in a "false time," a time when lying is a generally accepted practice, whether it involves white lies, false representation on social media, fake news, false promises, offers, projects, buildings, or policies… we are exposed to lies of various scales every day. Hence the idea to work on this specific text, where through a comic approach, we will focus on these social phenomena which, unfortunately, are becoming so frequent that lying has developed into a socially acceptable norm.

In "The Lie," although Florian Zeller concentrates on marital relations, he succeeds in offering us a wide palette of concepts, perceptions, and practices of lying. By placing the married couple within the scale of a microcosm and observing all the cause-and-effect conditions arising from the lies in which the characters are wrapped and continue to involve themselves, we can easily envision the resulting analogies that apply to society as a macrocosm.

As part of the palette of various concepts of lying, we will have the opportunity to face the sayings: a lie has short legs; a liar must have a good memory; as well as the notions that lying is always wrong, except when there is a good reason for it (which means it isn't always wrong!); or that lying is, by definition, providing information while believing it to be untrue, with the intent to deceive, or at least to mislead, the person being lied to (whereby the information itself does not always have to be false).

Furthermore, if we continue to develop the analogies between the aforementioned micro- and macrocosm—i.e., the married couple as an embodiment of society—then what happens to the characters on stage can easily be attributed to society as a whole. This leads us to a conclusion reached by many philosophers who have studied lying. Namely, people lie most easily about socially acceptable norms. And if lying itself becomes a socially acceptable norm, then the general level of truthfulness drops; people are encouraged to lie; it becomes harder for people to trust one another, and the same happens regarding institutions; social cohesion weakens; no one trusts anyone, and ultimately, society collapses.