BURNOUT PARADISE to Open at University of Arizona

Four performers step onto four treadmills and start running. Over the next 65 minutes they will try to cook a three-course meal, complete a grant application, put on a performance and clear a list of everyday chores, all without stepping off. If they fail, the audience can ask for its money back.

Arizona Arts Live at the University of Arizona presents Burnout Paradise, created by the Australian collective Pony Cam, Oct. 7-10 at Centennial Hall. The show comes to Tucson following an Off-Broadway run at New York's Astor Place Theatre, where Time Out New York called it "an amusing indictment of our soul-crushing go-go-go ethos and a gleeful conjuring of community."

The audience sits on the Centennial Hall stage, a few feet from the treadmills. Each treadmill has a job: Survival, Admin, Performance and Leisure. To win, the performers have to finish every task and beat their own distance record. They cannot do it alone, so audience members are recruited to fetch ingredients, lend a hand and, eventually, eat the meal.

"Most of us have a list that never gets finished, Pony Cam put theirs on four treadmills and asked the audience for help. It is very funny, and it is a little too familiar. I should mention that one of the tasks is a grant application. I have never wanted a group of artists to succeed more." said Chad Herzog, Executive & Artistic Director of Arizona Arts Live.

Pony Cam is a Melbourne-based collective known for work that loosens the usual rules of a theater, including who sits where and who does what. Because the audience shares the stage, seating is limited to three per performance. Students can attend for $10.

PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE