I walk into the room and am faced with four treadmills and various items: balloons, a pot and stove, magazines. Five people dressed in athletic gear greet me, then four of them get on the treadmills and start to run.
While running, one cooks a tomato pasta; another checks items off a to-do list (paint nails, wash hair, read a book, bat a beach ball); another types up a grant application; another plays a keyboard and sings, sounding more unhinged as his breath is sucked out. They shout at me and each other; it’s a flurry of sound and movement, both invigorating and deeply stressful.
This is day two of rehearsals for Burnout Paradise, a show by Melbourne experimental theatre collective Pony Cam. In the show, each treadmill has a label: survival, admin, performance, leisure. Throughout four 10-minute rotations, the performers try to complete tasks related to those categories, and beat their previous collective distance. If they fail on any of these fronts, the audience is eligible for a refund.
Today, they’re rehearsing one cycle. When the 10 minutes is up, they take turns calling out the distance they’ve run, and scorekeeper Ava Campbell checks their tasks. The result: a pass. There’s a collective sigh of relief. Someone hands me a bowl of hot pasta.
“There is a constant fear,” performer Hugo Williams says. “You have to be fairly focused the whole time … There are moments when you realise you haven’t been focused, and the fear comes back.”
Burnout Paradise, which premiered at Melbourne’s Fringe festival last year, uses the treadmill as an analogy for the chaotic juggle of artistic life. “We are not always fully competent in doing the tasks – it is very relatable to real life,” Campbell says.
“It levels the playing field for us, so that we can layer other things on top of it,” adds performer Dominic Weintraub. “Running becomes an equaliser.”
Burnout Paradise is strangely not the only show at Rising that features treadmills. The anarchic Let’s Paint TV, which will be performed live this week, began as a instructional painting program on Los Angeles public access television in the early 2000s. It soon evolved into something “a little more crazy” according to its host, US artist John Kilduff: “I’m always aware of people’s attention span, or at least my attention span, so I started to include fun things that could happen.”
Let’s Paint TV has become a cult online phenomenon: every week Kilduff goes live on YouTube and Instagram, running on the treadmill all the while painting, blending drinks, playing music, cooking and interacting with his audience. It’s joyfully chaotic, all underscored by the artist’s motto: Embrace Failare (typo deliberate).
The performance is largely improvised, with Kilduff taking energy and inspiration from his callers. The treadmill adds to the haywire – and provides motivation and momentum. “I just show up and do it,” Kilduff says. “If I stumble out of the gate or if I’m a little bit off … being on the treadmill, you’re forced to keep going.”
There is also Flemish artist Miet Warlop’s One Song: a live performance of a single song on repeat, as its musicians concurrently run an obstacle course. They become more deranged as the show goes on and the music morphs into the sound of exhaustion and euphoria.
That risk of collapse is the tension driving all three shows. “Audiences start to understand the toll it’s taking on our bodies to do this, and then the game starts to become … quite desperate,” Williams says.
Yet there is something celebratory, too – a reminder of what the body and spirit is capable of. One foot in front of the other, no matter what. And, Kilduff adds, there’s one big benefit of running on a treadmill in the name of art: “It does keep you in shape.”
Burnout Paradise is on at Malthouse Theatre 13-15 June. John Kilduff is performing Let’s Paint TV at Night Trade in Capitol Arcade. And Miet Warlop’s One Song will be on Melbourne town hall 13-15 June; all part of Rising festival
