The Secret Cause begins as a long-inactive theater director, José Mauricio, returns to the stage buoyed by a new government grant. Announcing that he's going to mount a play that will expose how people really live, he asks his actors to travel through the city and learn from people who are waiting on welfare lines, in AIDS hospices, and in homeless shelters. Yet what the players learn seems to reveal far more about themselves and their relationships to each other than it does about Brazil. What can truly be learned from the suffering of others? Bianchi confronts the bad faith of the Brazilian elites and their refusal to come to grips with the contradictions that define their lives. He creates an intricate web of subterfuge and power plays, eventually blurring the lines between the action on and off stage.