Sixteen years ago, Lies He arrived at the theater billboards as a nostalgic musical comedy anchored in the great pop hits of the eighties. Today, the phenomenon has grown to becoming a multiverse that includes new production, concerts, a drag version, and more recently, a series that became the most watched in Amazon Prime Mexico worldwide in its first weekend. At the head of everything its creator, Josรฉ Manuel Lรณpez Velarde, who defines the project as a “Meniverse“That permeates the message of being who you are.” Of these characters that realize that they had been lying to others, but above all themselves and that they find the forces to face who they really are, “he tells us.
From the first theatrical version, to the development of the series (which took seven years of preparation) the universe of Lies It has been built as a tribute to melodrama, soap operas, musical video clips, and that music that some call “ladies” but that marked generations. “More than wanting to put the songs to some characters in a story, it was to let those songs tell who those characters were,” he recalls. From there he was putting together a visual and narrative world where every color, hairstyle and silhouette connects with an archetype, but also breaks it. SashaVerรณnica Castro, Lady Di, the Treasure … They all live a little in Daniela, Dulce, Yuri and Lupita.
Each of them represents a gender mandate that begins to break. Daniela discovers that her perfection was a jail. Dulce reconciles with his sexual instinct, beyond religious guilt. Lupita, who has survived without looking at her wounds, learns to contact her heart, with what she needs. Yuri, who hides in professional success, dares to ask who he is, and to pay attention to herself. โWomen are usually put on very limited, very little diverse and contradictory papers, even. But in Lies The story belongs to them. It is a place of women in which also, through them, we can question masculinities. โ
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This speech is not accidental. Lies It puts the center what Lรณpez Velarde calls “the doll box.” In the theatrical version there are explicit references in songs like ‘I’m not a dollโ, ‘Your doll’ o ‘Broken doll’and even box -shaped scenographies, with characters that break stereotypes. “It’s a kind of Pinocchioin which there are four stereotyped single -color dolls, who believe they can only be one thing (the lover, the secretariat, the executive or the caretaker). But, they are those dolls that refuse to be that and in the end they become women of flesh and blood. โ
Speaking a little of the series, Josรฉ tells us that he thought about the audiovisual expansion from the beginning. A few months after the work was ready, he signed a contract that reserved the rights for film and television. His bet was to make a film, he even developed the complete storyboard, but at that time Mexican cinema did not offer viable conditions to pay the musical rights of more than 30 eighties songs. It was then that he began to imagine her as a series. Luis Gerardo Mรฉndezremember, he encouraged him at a dinner to make her come true. With the rights about to expire, they wrote a Pitch for Netflix, Bibles, Synopsis and character sheets together with a team of writers. Netflix passed. Then they tried again, this time with Amazon.
Beyond the stage, the musical has become a cultural phenomenon that transcends the theater. In social networks, fans recreate scenes and changing rooms of the characters, listen to the versions of the songs that appear in the series. This impact shows that lies is not only a passenger show, but a universe that continues to grow and connect with new generations, renewing in each interpretation and meeting with its audience. Seeing how people respond, sings, screams and disguises himself is the best indicator that the work has become a space of belonging and expression for many.
Written 18 years ago and on the billboard for 16, Lies It has also been a vehicle to talk about identity and diversity from a deeply personal look. For its creator, showing these possibilities does not come from the desire to give lessons, but makes him convinced that his gaze is twin with feminisms. Far from seeing a conflict between both struggles, he insists that they go on the same side. That tension between what is expected and what one is, crosses the entire work, as well as the will to get out of the boxes imposed by patriarchy. Maybe that’s why Lies It has resisted so much, because behind the show there is a posture. Because what could be just fun, also sustains in a political conviction. “There is something that I mean that it is important to put it in the world. I would never participate in a project that is not aligned with something that I want to stay there. It is putting out there something that contributes to a conversation.”
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The evolution of the project has also been personal for the author. “I, being part of the LGBT community, always try to include it because we are part of reality. Here we are and exist. The stories that do not include us are not portraying what we really are as a society.” In Lies There is Yuri, a bisexual character who also questions monogamy. In Mentidragsthere is sexual and gender diversity between the cast. In the most recent version of the assembly, a trans actress plays a woman CIS. The public, he says, has responded with enthusiasm. โIn Pride there were people disguised as the characters, with posters of phrases from the series. I am very proud than in Lies Welcome, welcome and welcome. โ
His activism, he says, is also reflected in everyday life: โMy family is Homoparental. Two parents with two daughters. We separate, but we can travel with our daughters and have a familiar relationship with them. There are many times situations in which you cannot, but that is where the center of my activism is. In creating a more inclusive world for families. [โฆ] What I want is a world in which people are open to all that diversity, and know that it is an advantage, it is not a threat. That makes us better as humanity. โSeeing how people respond, sings, screams, disguise or have gone more than 300 times to the work, he says, is still a gift.
Although many live it as a light musical comedy, Lies It has a very clear political position. The public forgets that the political can also be fun, it can have many colors. It does not have to be sober or pamphlet to say something important. That is why he decides to give them all the focus to them, because their characters are strong and interesting women, with a story to tell and also admits that their interpreters in the series did a great job giving them life.
Although Lies He continues on the billboard and has gained new strength thanks to his arrival in streaming, his creator is already focused on new projects. One of them is the musical adaptation of One day without Mexicansthe film that imagined a scenario in which all Latinos disappear overnight in California. The intention is that the assembly can be carried out both in Mexico and in the United States, because, as he points out, “it concerns both Mexico and the United States.” The premise, he says, is still urgent. The question is still alive, especially in a political context like the current one, where the discourse against the migrant population, particularly Latin, returns to spaces of power and electoral rhetoric. True to his style, the musical approach will not be a pamphlet, but a combination of humor, satire and heart. The bet is not only to raise a work, but to put on the table a necessary conversation about racism, exclusion and belonging, from an artistic and deeply political view.
He also believes that it is time to strengthen the achievements of Mexican musical theater written by Mexicans. Quote the case of Liesbut also that of 7 times to Godwho has gone very well and had two successful seasons in Colombia. Remember too If they leave uswhich reached more than 500 functions, which considers huge in Mexico. Its bet is that this inspires more national musical theater, and that it can also be exported. “I would love that the success of Lies I open the door to my other musicals and other Mexican musicals to become material for other media. โ
Josรฉ tells us that he believes “humans are not linear, we are not dolls, nor are we made of a single color.” Each of the protagonists must face what has been repressed to fit, to be accepted, to fulfill mandates that often reduce women to a single role. The work not only questions that, it also opens broader questions about identity. Who are we? Are we still the same people as ten years ago, as five, or even yesterday? The author says this: every day we continue to believe lies. And undoing them implies energy, introspection, and the bravery of doubting the most entrenched beliefs. Hopefully, he says, we all had a night like the ones he offers Liesin which everything is removed and we discover that we can be much more than we had believed.
