*** Welcome to piglix ***

Dummies Theatre


Dummies Theatre is a Canadian experimental and interdisciplinary contemporary theatre company known for creating free site-specific works and daring productions in vacant stores located in Montreal during the 1990s and into the following decade.

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. The production took place in the vacant store below Papadakos's apartment on Montreal's Boulevard Saint-Laurent. The actors commissioned installation artist Pierre Allard to create a storefront display. While the artist was setting up, a falling dummy shattered the glass window and crashed on the sidewalk, missing Montreal Gazette's reporter Albert Nerenberg by only a few feet. Nerenberg wrote an article about the incident that prompted the group to use the term Dummies in their play title and Theatre name. 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 before the performances to lure passers-by. The popularity and success of the initial two-week run allowed for an extension of two weeks.

Papadakos, who took on the role of Artistic Director in addition to writing and directing the shows, was motivated by the show's success and a desire to create a "conscious" theatre. She launched a financing drive and caught the attention of Canadian philanthropist, Phyllis Lambert, who saw it as a way to rejuvenate neighborhoods through art. With the assistance of The Samuel and Saidye Bronfman Family Foundation (who was launching its Urban Issues Program of which Dummies Theatre was one of the seven recipients out of three hundred Canadian applicants) and various other sources including the CALQ, 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. In the fall of 1995, the group completed its trilogy on immigrants with Dummies 95 in yet another empty store on the Boulevard Saint-Laurent.


...
Wikipedia

...