All the Days I Lied

by Marta Aran, 2020
One female.

Winner of the 2020 Max Award for Best New Playwright

A woman who has lived with her lie for fifteen years. A woman who has tried, day after day, to neaten this lie with a calendar. A woman who has tried to keep this lie from escaping into the real world. A woman who knows very little about pleasure or her own sexuality, but who pretends to the world that the opposite is true. A woman who will be honest for the first time, in front of everyone. All the Days I Lied is a calendar of all the lies in the world of sex: those we tell ourselves, those told to us by others, and those we end up telling to feel part of a sexualised society. Lies that make our lives look and feel better but that, at the same time, can be comical, absurd, and devastating.

And then they asked me…
What about the biggest lie you’ve ever told?’
And I thought about it again.
Like you’re thinking now.
But not as much as the other time,
maybe a bit less,
quite a lot less.
Actually, I hardly thought at all,
it was like a flash,
so quick that I didn’t have time to doubt the answer.
I could answer that question loud and clear.
But I couldn’t.
No.
And the strangest thing is I’d never thought of it that way:
As a lie.

This translation of All the Days I Lied was made possible thanks to support from the Institut Ramón Llull. It is available to download from the Catalan Drama website.

Trailer from the original production, performed by the author, Marta Aran.