The first reading of Pablo Picasso's text was performed in the Paris apartment of Michel Leiris in 1944. The participants were Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Valentine Hugo, Raymond Queneau, Zanie Campan, Dora Maar and Picasso himself. Albert Camus directed the piece. The reading took place in front of Jacques Lacan, Jean-Louis Barrault, Georges Bataille, Georges Braque, María Casares, Valentine Hugo, Henri Michaux, Pierre Reverdy and Claude Simon.
The Living Theatre made the text a part of their first critical success, when three poetic pieces were staged at the same time. The event at Cherry Lane Theatre in Greenwich Village, NYC, in March 2 1952, was called "An Evening of Bohemian Theatre" and also included texts by Gertrude Stein and T.S. Eliot.