RISING’s website describes experimental theatre collective Pony Cam’s Burnout Paradise as “a delusional love letter to the labour, recklessness and euphoric optimism that comes before burnout.” Those clowns at Pony Cam successfully captured all of these, with an unforgettable workout that made the most of audience participation.

The show opened with four of Pony Cam’s five players - Claire Bird, William Strom, Dominic Weintraub and Hugo Williams - warming up on treadmills. Each treadmill represented a part of life where burnout is common: cooking, admin, performing, and cramming tasks into your precious leisure time. They wagered they could complete these complicated tasks while running on treadmills. Every 10 minutes, they would switch treadmills and tasks. On stage right, a whiteboard displayed the total distance Pony Cam had run during the show’s dress rehearsal. If they couldn’t complete their tasks and break their record distance, they would have to refund the audience’s tickets.

Very quickly, audience members were invited to aid Pony Cam in completing their increasingly complex tasks. I volunteered to sit on stage and be served a three-course meal that was prepared on the Cooking treadmill. Audience members, even from the back row, were called up to hand props to the runners on the Leisure treadmill. Involving the audience in the challenges helped us sympathise with the perspiring performers. We all wanted to see them succeed in their tasks and cringed when things went wrong.

The anticipation of something going wrong kept the show’s pacing brisk and thrilling. Bird’s run on the Performance treadmill - which required the runner to perform three skits - was an amazing series of dance routines, where I kept expecting her to fall on her face and yet she never missed a step. The Admin treadmill was the most relatable for me. The performers had to prepare a grant application to the Charles Sturt theatre. Weintraub being told the application had incomplete fields seconds from the deadline gave me second-hand anxiety.

In the end, Pony Cam fell short of their lofty goals. Weintraub couldn’t even complete his first act during his run on the Performance treadmill, and they didn’t break their dress rehearsal distance record.

Still, Pony Cam ended the night with high spirits by reenacting OK Go’s iconic Here It Goes Again music video with their treadmills. Burnout Paradise was an anarchic bit of performance art that left everyone in high spirits.

Burnout Paradise was performed as part of RISING 2024, on the 13-16 June at the Malthouse Theatre.