Many punters see the Adelaide Fringe as an affordable way to catch their favourite comedian, or as an excuse to drag their colleagues to a big budget high-skin-to-clothing-ratio circus experience. However, since its unofficial inception in 1960 by local artists shut out by the Adelaide Festival, the Fringe has always been about promoting local talent and creating an opportunity for them to find a wider audience.

Me, Myself and Hand, a Fringe Fund grant recipient this year, tells the story of a woman named Linda (Zola Allen), who appears to have an eerie wooden IKEA “Handskalad” instead of a right hand. In fact, we learn, Linda has a collection of Handskalad(s), but that one particular Handskalad may have a mind of its own.

This is the first solo Fringe show of local emerging performer and clown Zola Allen, and the directorial debut of emerging theatre maker and drag artist Arran Beattie. The show features Linda’s slow possession by a demonic and torturous Pinocchio (the aforementioned right Handskalad) and evolves into an intriguing exploration of why we expect performers to divulge their personal tragedies and traumas onstage for our enjoyment.

There’s an appealing Charlie-Kaufman-in-Adaptation meta-theatricality in Allen’s rapport with the audience throughout the piece. We hear that the Fringe Fund budget for props quickly ran out, audience members are required to hold the microphone for her, and thus Allen displays a charming self-deprecatory instinct through many of the sequences.

At times however, this could make some audience members question whether the piece will have a meaningful conclusion. Additionally, lighting and sound appears somewhat ad-hoc with the occasional audio glitch, and whilst this has an appeal as a haphazard aesthetic, more thought could be given to streamlining these elements to make emotional changes more impacting.

Me, Myself and Hand has several deeper notions throughout, but many get muddled in the desire to maintain a lighter air. However, the piece reaches its most compelling potential in its centring of the performer themselves. In this era where there’s a desperate need to be ‘authentic’, what are we asking an artist to do when we demand they be ‘more vulnerable’? Are we asking them to cede their mental health and bodies to us for our catharsis, in return (in theory anyway) for a ticket sale or a slice of Parisian bread?

Such questions are worth asking as we observe the increasing commercialisation of festival seasons, not just in Adelaide but across the country. In this context, Me, Myself and Hand is a daring artistic development that reminds us about the individuals at the core of all artistic pursuits, and the risks they take to keep going.