The country needs new children. Smart, beautiful, productive children. As close to perfect as possible – to clean up the mess their parents left behind. They’re supposed to save the future and keep the pension system afloat.
In Poulenc’s musical theatre piece Les mamelles de Tirésias, Thérèse rebels against the obsession with reproduction, opts out and calls for revolution. In this land of unlimited possibilities, Thérèse can transform herself: her body is just a replaceable shell, allowing her to slip out of society’s expectations. The job of repopulating the country is now left to a handful of men. But they’re easily sidetracked – by absurd ideas, pointless bets, a pixelated penguin on Herrmannplatz and the unsolicited wisdom of Berlin’s city pigeons.
LANGUAGE In French, with German surtitles
