The New York Times: One night last month at Astor Place Theater, audience members hurriedly hustled onto and off the stage to help four sweat-drenched, exhausted performers jogging on treadmills complete various tasks: shave one actor’s neck, solve a Rubik’s Cube and whip up a pasta dinner from scratch for two audience members to feast on and rate.
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“Burnout Paradise” was performed at the WOW (Without Walls) Festival at La Jolla Playhouse last year. As a San Diegan, I was SO EXCITED to go see it, as I thought the concept was really freaking cool, and I love the WOW Festival! WOW is basically Playground for the LJP performers. I unfortunately couldn’t get tickets, as it was sold out almost immediately due to Pony Cam’s popularity and their super short runtime. This is one of those types of shows that I always find entertaining: people on a time crunch doing ridiculous things for the entertainment of the masses. In this new world of strange, avant-garde theatre, Burnout Paradise is an awesome diversion from the norm of the theatrical three-act structure. We need more performance art like that! We live ij such an ever-changing, fast-paced world. Burnout Paradise is the perfect look or analysis of the ways in which we live now - get it done or lose your money!
Can this show come to Carnegie Mellon? Please? I'm immediately reminded of the Chicago Company neo-futurists. Similarly this company races against the clock towards a shared goal of getting through all 30 of their sketches. The audience helps this by quickly shouting out which number to jump to next after completing one of those sections. What makes Burnout Paradise so interesting is that it places real monetary stakes on the audience and the company. At first I misread it and thought that if the team did reach their goal the onions got their money back. But actually, it's either way around. If the company does not meet their shared goal then the audience can ask for their money back, which happens about 60% of the time. The production manager side of me really wants to see their budget sheets and how much money they are making or losing by doing this. Does this Rising steaks bring in enough audience to balance out the cost of audience members who get their money back when they fail?
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