The group was founded in April, 1992 by actors Anna Papadakos, Carlo Alacchi, filmmaker Pascal Maeder and soundman Dave Ballard for the production of the original play Dummies in the Window.

With no money to promote the show and a strong creative intention to build a "street theatre environment" by behaving like "barkers", the actors stood in front of the venue before the performances to lure passersby.

With the assistance of The Samuel and Saidye Bronfman Family Foundation and various other sources, the newly formed theatre company raised enough funds to produce a second play, Return of the Dummies, the following year in a bigger vacant store a few doors up the street.

Beside “Dummies Theatre” in small print, the large, luminescent blue-on-black block of type on the top says “Medea in the Media” - an alliteration as seductive as it is confusing, leaving a nagging impression of misreading.

A band of haunting black and white images across the middle of the poster has the same effect, seducing while eluding straightforward comprehension: on the left, a misty field with a bit of railway track; on the right, the rippled surface of a sea or lake.