The Couple in the Cage documents the traveling performance of Guillermo Gomez-Peña and Coco Fusco, in which they exhibited themselves as caged Amerindians from an imaginary island. Audience reactions dramatize the dilemma of cross-cultural misunderstanding as many are shown to believe that the "savages" were real. The artists' experiences are interwoven with archival footage of ethnographic displays from the past. A powerful blend of comic fiction and poignant reflection on the morality of treating human beings as exotic curiosities.