In a work filmed entirely indoors on an empty theater stage, the outside world emerges purely through the spoken word. Twenty-three women speak about their lives; their stories provide the scripts for actresses who then play them. The actresses in turn speak about their own lives. Coutinho’s exploration of staging, theater, and acting in Playing becomes central to his subsequent films—Moscow(2009), Songs (2011), Last Conversations (2015)—signaling a shift in his method. Here the documentary mode confronts the theatrical kernel at the heart of all cinema, eliding the distinction between fiction and reality.