Zack Adams

"The idea is that Zack wants to find out one way or the other is he's going to become famous or not," Shane Adamczak begins in order to explain his latest alter-ego adventure, 'Zack Adams: A Vision Of My Future Self'.

"And the only way he's going to do that is to travel ten years into the future and hunt himself down," Adamczak adds. "But when he gets there he can't find himself, and then he falls in love with a girl. So yeah, it's pretty full on." A frequent visitor to Adelaide come Fringe Festival time, Adamczak first brought the ever ambitious Zack with him during the 2006 event in the first installment, "A Complete History Of...'; this latest production is the third, with the second part not making it here last year.

"The first show was all about Zack discovering where he wanted to go as an actor," Adamczak reiterates. "The second show was called 'Elevator', was after Zack had finally become a successful artist but on a big debut night of a show he becomes trapped in an elevator. There's he goes through to this other world which turns out to be a reflection of his self-conscience and all that sort of weird stuff. Now, this show is based on Zack's reflection of the failure of 'Elevator' and that's how he came to decide to travel into the future.

"If you didn't see the second show I basically summarise it in this one," he assures me, "so it doesn't really matter. I do try to write each show like it can be viewed as a completely separate story otherwise it can alienate lots of people." Admittedly this may all sound a bit, as Adamczak puts it, "weird", so how exactly does Zack time travel?

"Well, initially he tries to track down Christopher Lloyd," he tells me, all irony intended, "because he played Dr. Emmett Brown [in the 'Back To The Future' series] Zack figured he could help him, but then Lloyd gets a restraining order against him," he continues, deadpan. "So let's just say it involves a wind up wrist watch and a year ten science teacher named Mr. Punt who thinks that Zack is a girl, and that's all I'm going to say," before adding: "Mr. Punt's loosely based on a real science teacher I had but I'm pretty sure that he didn't build a time machine."

From Perth, the character of Zack Adams, surprisingly first came to him during his first visit to Adelaide in 2005. "He started as a fake name at an open mic night here," he tells me. "I thought I'd get up and try out some of my stand up material and then that just developed into a short piece that went onto become the first show. It was never my nickname before that," he avers, "but now when I'm on tour I get used to people calling me Zack."

Steve Jones

Zack Adams performs 'A Vision Of My Future Self' from Tues 4 March as part of the Fringe