Short of Lying

Short of Lying is a storytelling performance and a lecture on storytelling at the same time. More specifically, the performance speaks of the power of stories to frame and manipulate reality and how narrative thinking and storytelling has been appropriated by communication media. The performance is situated in the conflicting realm of online publishing, which has confiscated narrative thinking and storytelling since the 1990s to serve the neoliberal logics. In true TED-Talk style, Short of Lying draws attention to the art of discourse while exposing literary mechanisms of deception, in order to create a playful tension between awareness and misdirection.

Winner of the Sabam Jongtheaterschrijfprijs at Theater aan Zee 2018. The jury said: “In Short of Lying, Luanda Casella dissects the lie as the ultimate narrative tool, through a spoken word performance that balances between stand-up psychology, scientific TED-Talk and literary storytelling. Using a text ingeniously composed around bluff, mystification and bullshit, she cleverly exposes the mechanisms of deception.”