Pony Cam Collective makes working out on treadmill look fun

If the four performers on the treadmills failed to complete all the tasks at hand by the end of the 70-minute show, the audience gets its money back.

Fair.

But here’s the deal: The audience has to help.

That meant sending one audience member sprinting from Centennial Hall to Main Gate’s popular No Anchovies pizzeria to pick up a large cheese pie for performer Dominic Weintraub.

Chan Lin needed a little local brain trust to help her draft a grant proposal.

Hugo Williams snagged a volunteer sous chef to help him whip up the first of the troupe’s three-course dinner served to two volunteer diners seated at a checkered-cloth table next to his treadmill.

And William Strom needed a volunteer or three to help him check off tasks from 21 written on a dry board “To Do” list.

Did we mention that all of this was taking place while the four performers were running, walking, jogging or otherwise moving on the treadmills?

The treadmills were labeled “Survival,” “Admin,” “Performance” and “Leisure,” symbolizing the aspects of our life, from work and home life to how we spend our downtime.

Cast member Ava Campbell had the dual role of timekeeper — the troupe had four 12-minute rounds, and after each, they rotated to a new treadmill — and concierge, delivering cups of Gatorade whenever an audience member yelled “Gatorade!”

Welcome to “Burnout Paradise,” part comedy show, part endurance test and 100% fun.

This wasn’t a performance as much as performance art, as the troupe members rushed to tackle their tasks at hand. But the show stayed true to theater’s core storytelling mission.

Each performer shared a little about themselves along the way, like Weintraub’s story of how his mother bribed him with sugary cereal so that he would put on his swimsuit for swim practice. That one included Weintraub taking off his shoes and shorts and putting on swim trunks over his underwear, then taking off his underwear — all while moving on the treadmill.

At one point it looked as if Weintraub might experience a “wardrobe malfunction” similar to Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show. Lucky for him and us, a woman in the second row rushed to his rescue, grabbing a towel from the Survival station that she used to shield him from the audience.

Other highlights included Williams reciting Hamlet’s famous soliloquy “To be, or not to be”; Lin creating origami birds like the ones she made as a kid growing up in Florida; the balding Strom transforming to his younger self when he donned a hairpiece to play keyboard and sing emo-pop; and Weintraub throwing a football from the Centennial Hall stage into the theater for several audience members to try and catch.

Watching them moving and multitasking on treadmills was exhausting and delightfully exhilarating.

But there was a message to their madness: If you spend your life solely focused on only one aspect of your life, are you really living to the fullest?

In the end, while they completed the to-do list, the ensemble fell short of the target miles on the treadmills.

Campbell told the audience filling the Centennial Hall stage that they could, indeed, get a refund.

But they had to meet her in front of the rest of the audience to request it.

No one did.

The collective’s Tucson run with Arizona Arts Live — the show repeats at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday — is the first stop of their 2026 U.S. tour and comes after Pony Cam’s nearly 90-day, critically acclaimed off-Broadway residency in New York City that ended in late May.

General admission tickets are $39.25, $10 for students through arizonaartslive.com.