
William Strom, Hugo Williams, Claire Bird, Dominic Weintraub of Pony Cam in Burnout Paradise. Photo: Teddy Wolff
The metaphors in Burnout Paradise could hardly be less subtle: here we all are on the treadmill of our day-to-day routines, overfull with the mundane tasks it takes to successfully “adult”–feed ourselves, keep the bills paid, wrangle all the endless paperwork generated by modern life—and then with everything else we want to fit around the edges under the category of “leisure.” Actually, I guess it’s the opposite of metaphor, because the performers, Claire Bird, William Strom, Dominic Weintraub, Hugo Williams–four fifths of the Australian performance collective Pony Cam–are literally running on treadmills as they symbolically perform said tasks (or, you know, analogous versions thereof that can be performed while running on a treadmill in the middle of St. Ann’s Warehouse). The fifth member of the collective, Ava Campbell, serves as an emcee, keeping a time clock, selling merch. and serving the audience on-demand Gatorade.
The treadmills are labeled with rough handmade placards: Survival, Admin, Performance, Leisure, and each of the four on the treadmills will get a ten-minute slot to attend to each category. They tell us the rules up front: They’ve assigned a “mega-task” to each of these buckets. They need to complete all four tasks within 40 minutes, or the audience is entitled to their money back. They’re also trying to beat a group record for greatest collective distance run on the treadmills during the show. And they’ve only succeeded about 25 percent of the time in the performances completed thus far. (The show was presented at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this summer; I saw the second performance in New York.)
The mega-tasks seem at best challenging, at worst impossible, to perform on a treadmill. For Survival, for example, that task is to cook and serve a three-course pasta dinner (yes, live; yes, someone running on a treadmill has access to kitchen tools and an induction burner; yes, they swear that they’ve done extensive safety testing). For Admin, it’s completing a grant application from start to finish and submitting it before the last of the time countdown—with the application projected on a screen overhead, so we can track progress. (And they are ruthless in their accounting; at the performance I saw, internet hiccups caused some lags at the end, but no forbearance on the time clock was extended.) For Performance, each will perform an act related to a childhood memory–a song, a monologue, a full dance routine (all of these have their moments of exquisite cringe; the jazz routine, sequins and all, performed by Bird was perhaps the high point, though Strom’s musical stylings were a close second). And for Leisure, there’s a whiteboard on the props table containing a giant list of smaller tasks, ranging from small acts of personal hygiene like shaving or brushing teeth to social niceties like wrapping a gift or playing a game of Bingo to things that feel so out there in context that it’s hard to imagine achieving them–Deer hunt? Trick or treat?
That props table contains, along with the whiteboard, all the objects required to complete the smaller tasks, including the ingredients for the pasta meal, which is served to two members of the audience. Since the performers can’t leave their treadmills, audience members start to be enlisted from the beginning to fetch and carry, as well. The first request is simple—two volunteers to eat the meal being cooked (though those wary of audience participation should be warned that the diners’ opinions will be asked later). Then there’s grabbing items from the prop table: the dinner ingredients; the banana needed for Leisure to “eat fruit” or the Rubik’s Cube that needs to be solved. Then Admin starts needing help with the grant application–suggestions for an outdoor performance, or quick budget math. And, while you’re watching one treadmill, the audience’s role keeps escalating on the other ones: suddenly it feels like half the audience is taking and submitting photos, sitting down on the stage for a game of bingo, or putting on costumes to trick or treat at a cardboard door. The tasks get sillier and sometimes actively mortifying for the audience member participating–but by then, we’re hooked.
Is it gimmicky? Absolutely. Gimmicky on multiple levels at once, even: the treadmills, the time clock, the merch table. It’s chaotic and splashy and overwhelming and silly. But it’s nonetheless built on a foundation of real emotions: on the one hand the “runner’s high” of thinking you’ve cracked the code of doing it all; on the other, the weary recognition of the deep, exhausted pit of burnout. (The show introduces each performer with a graphic that includes their current stress level.) And while there’s something serious at the root of it, and the performers enact their tasks with utmost sincerity–even the most ridiculous elements–the overall tone also embraces the absurdity of the whole endeavor. (And they cap it off with a little pop of joy in the form of a treadmill-based dance number that you may recognize from a music video a while back.)
Perhaps the best thing about Burnout Paradise is the way it makes a collective of its entire audience. Pony Cam’s mission is to devise performance works that create transformative communal experiences, and there’s no question they did that here. I’m not sure this particular configuration of St. Ann’s was the best way to experience the show–it felt like a lot of time was spent just moving audience members into and out of the seating risers–but we were all in it together, from the audience members volunteering their nonprofit affiliations to the grant proposal to the trick-or-treaters to all of us batting birthday balloons around the seating area. Technology failed the performance I saw, but the indefatigable performers did not–and neither did the audience. The final finish was a nail-biter; I won’t tell you how it came out, but I doubt anyone would have asked for their money back anyway–at that point, we were sharing responsibility for the outcome.