‘Our work always investigates joy, and how joy can allow for non-traditional audiences to experience theatre,’ says Dominic Weintraub, one of the five members of theatre company Pony Cam. The Melbourne company’s latest creation, made with collaborator David Williams, is Grand Theft Theatre, a recreation of theatrical moments that have impacted the members of the company throughout their lives. ‘We really tap into the collective memory of everyone’s experiences at the theatre. You’re going into one show, but really going into hundreds of shows in one night,’ explains Ava Campbell, another Pony Cam member. ‘The revival of memory takes many different forms,’ adds Weintraub. ‘Sometimes it’s us talking, sometimes it’s a dance with choreography taken from 40 or 50 different shows, sometimes we re-perform entire scenes.’

Consequently, Grand Theft Theatre is something of a Franken-show, featuring many forms. ‘There’s a space shared by all of these shows: that is the effect they create, whether it was an indie show that you saw in the back of some place you’ll never go again or a huge production in your city’s arts centre,’ adds Pony Cam’s William Strom. For this production, Pony Cam also hope to recreate some of the other shows playing at Adelaide. ‘It’s a way to contextualise the work within the Festival,’ says company member Hugo Williams. ‘People are seeing these shows; they’re making these memories right now.’

In Grand Theft Theatre, audiences are asked to share their favourite performances and to reflect on them. In this way, perfect strangers can find connection in communal recollection. ‘Maybe one of them saw it in Russia in the 90s and maybe one of them saw it recently in Melbourne, and now they both get to have a conversation about that,’ explains Weintraub. Grand Theft Theatre encourages shared remembering, but not always agreement. ‘With that subjectivity comes the fierce passion of “I remember it this way”’ says Campbell. ‘We had one scenario where Dom was performing a part of his memory and an audience member told us “no it didn’t happen like that! I saw the show back in 2009 and it actually happened like this.”’ Weintraub concludes: ‘The memories are messy, the attempt to articulate is messy, the way that things get put together is messy. Part of the appeal is the energetic mess of it.’

Grand Theft Theatre, Latvian Hall ‘Talava’, Sunday 3 & Monday 4, Saturday 9 – Monday 11 March, times vary.