Cão Solteiro has partnered with director André Godinho since 2007 to create shows that problematize the relationship between theatre and cinema as distinct languages that historically influence each other in a bidirectional flow. Along the way, they have tackled major film genres such as suspense (We All Go A Little Mad Sometimes, 2010, based on the work of Hitchcock); drama (Day For Night, 2014, with the conflictualities of the actual shooting of a film); or the musical (Could Be Worse: The Musical, 2019). Mechanisms such as the presence of a film crew on stage, contrasting the open visual composition of the stage with the selective view of the film camera (Day For Night); the special effects, dismantling the possibility of illusion (We're Gonna Be Alright, 2017); the dubbing of the actors' voices (Play The Film, 2011); the quotation of scenographic images and costumes, the (un)happy ending. A hyper-fictionalized territory has been created, insofar as it contrasts the language of cinema and the way it correlates with reality by making use of the suspension of disbelief, and that of theatre, in which a false narrative construction is accepted. In this territory, everything is played out between the definitions of true and false. 

Clichés of the scenographic image and their meaning were listed and dissected (the infinite traveling of a camera following a person on the street in Heading Against The Wall, 2020; a hotel corridor in Day For Night; a night scene in the rain; the sudden braking of a car and the sound of a falling body; an amorous musical duet). Unstable spaces were opened up to test modes of communication to the limit.

“Everything in cinema begins with that moment, 100 years ago, when the train pulls into the station. People appropriated the movies, the moment they screamed and tried to run away, convinced that the train was actually coming towards them. On the weekly trip to the movies, you learned how to walk, smoke, kiss and suffer. The movies taught you how to be attractive. For example, wearing a trench coat always looks good, even when it's not raining.”