Paris, 1917: Several weeks after the premiere of "Parade", another surrealistic play was introduced to Paris: "Les Mamelles de Tirésias" (The Breasts of Tiresias) written by Guillaume Apollinaire. Based on the Ancient Greek legend of the prophet Tiresias, who had experienced life as both a man and a woman, Apollinaire tells us a modern satirical story about a young married woman, Thérèse, who becomes disgusted with being a woman and decides to become a man, Tirésias. She exchanges her sex with her husband at which point her breasts immediately fly off of her like balloons. The former husband without delay accepts his new role as a woman and before long gives birth to more than forty thousand children.* Some of the children are very talented, especially one of them who becomes a best-selling novelist. Not being satisfied with the small number of children, the new mother decides to refine the ways of nativity by using the artistic method of collage through which she creates a newborn journalist out of glue and paper. The play ends with Tirésias turning himself back into Thérèse finding that is even worst to be a man. Francis Poulenc will make a surreal opéra bouffe "Les Mamelles de Tirésias" in 1947.

*An allusion on widespread concern about the low birth rate in France in that time.