Anything You Can Do

★★★★ “Terrifically skilled physical theatre, inspired clowning, and inventive visual gags… Arts festivals could happily program this alongside international forerunners, it’s just as fearless and fresh.” The Age

“The thing about a show like this is that you never know what you’re going to get next – and it’s completely joyous and thrilling because of that… Anything You Can Do is thoughtful and wild, probing and comical, moving and an assault to the senses. Pony Cam’s work is like nothing else on Melbourne’s stages right now – and that’s good for young and old!”  Keith Gow

“a staged conundrum about memory, truth and the performance of both… It’s a joyful celebration of either ends of life… it’s also really funny.” Television is Furniture (Robert Reid)

Anything You Can Do is a touring process and performance work created by contemporary performance makers Pony Cam in collaboration with community performers.

Over 8-10 days, Pony Cam will lead a making process in collaboration with up to 10 local residents aged 60+. The goal is to create a piece that can be performed to smaller, more intimate audiences across 3-6 shows.

The making process will be co-designed in response to interests, needs and spaces of your region, and will platform the value of intergenerational collaboration and conversation. It will combine devising tasks, individual performance making, movement practice, script writing, and gentle reflective exercises.

The outcome is a live performance performed by the community ensemble alongside Pony Cam. Developed collaboratively and presented in a local space, this new work will explore the exchange of memory & legacy between generations. It will combine real stories, compelling lies, structured improvisation, accessible choreography, and irreverent clowning.

Ultimately, we will create a theatrical experience that feels hyperlocal, welcoming, and theatrically enthralling. 

WINNER Best Theatre – Melbourne Fringe Awards 2022
for Grand Theft Theatre

WINNER Best Emerging Company – Melbourne Fringe Awards 2021

WINNER Sound & Technical Excellence – Melbourne Fringe Awards 2020
NOMINATED Best Experimental – Melbourne Fringe Awards 2020
NOMINATED Best Contemporary Performance – Green Room Awards 2021
for A Red Square

1. Community Engagement: It actively involves local residents aged 60+ in the creative process, promoting community participation and collaboration.

2. Intergenerational Collaboration: The project fosters dialogue and collaboration between different generations, highlighting the exchange of memories and legacies.

3. Adaptability: The making process is co-designed to fit the interests, needs, and spaces of each region where it is performed, making it relevant to local communities.

4. Diverse Creative Techniques: It combines various creative techniques, including devising, movement, script writing, and reflective exercises, creating a multidimensional and engaging performance.

5. Emotional Resonance: By incorporating real stories and experiences, the performance offers a genuine and emotionally resonant experience for both participants and audiences.

6. Theatrical Diversity:  The show promises a mix of elements, such as structured improvisation, accessible choreography, and irreverent clowning, ensuring a dynamic and entertaining performance.

7.  Hyperlocal Appeal:  The project aims to create a theatrical experience that feels deeply connected to the local community, fostering a sense of local identity and ownership.

8. Inclusivity:  By including community members as performers, it promotes inclusivity and diversity in the arts, allowing individuals of different backgrounds and abilities to participate.

9. Theatrical Innovation: “Anything You Can Do” challenges traditional theater norms, offering a fresh and unconventional approach to performance.

Pony Cam is a collective of five theatre makers from around Australia. Together, we devise performance works that create transformative communal experiences.

Via working collaboratively, our practice emerges between our divergent aesthetic interests, physical abilities, social responsibilities, queer identities, cultural histories, and senses of humour.

Our practice tries to subvert audiences’ expectations of theatre by placing them at the center of the work and of meaning making. We attempt generous, risky, and experimental performance feats as a way to fundamentally connect with audiences, and remove formal barriers to access.

Principally, Pony Cam approaches creative projects by engaging unexpected and under-represented perspectives within communities. The result is a performance outcome that celebrates an exchange of ideas between artists and non-artists. A practice where the local benefits from, is challenged by and feels vital to the creation of each work.

We have trained together across regions in Melbourne, Sydney, Berlin and Taiwan, working with Gob Squad, Ontroerend Goed, Matteo Destro, Mammalian Diving Reflex and Bryony Kimmings. Our work has been born from the social and cultural learnings that have emerged from this training. 

Since 2019, Pony Cam has created 24 new works across forms, places and spaces. Presented across Australia, UK and Germany, their work has been awarded Best Theatre & Best Emerging Company at Melbourne Fringe Festival, and their work A Red Square was a finalist for the 2021 Green Room Awards.