The Edinburgh Fringe – the world’s largest and most talked-about arts festival – is firmly under way with more than 30,000 performers playing across 258 venues for the enjoyment of millions of punters from all corners of the world.
Somewhere amidst this mass of comedy, theatre and art can be found three performers from the shores of Jersey – all attempting to navigate the chaos and excitement of Scotland’s capital.
In the third part of a series of Edinburgh Fringe Q&As, Express spoke to Jersey comedian Wayne Stewart, who is performing his show ASURA: An Enlightenment Experiment for the full run of the festival.
What is ASURA and how did the idea for the show come about?
The show is pretty layered. The idea was to attempt to reach enlightenment through the use of AI by creating a spiritual AI bot – it was always going to be an absurd experiment, but I recognised that it was absurd.
I wanted to see what I could learn from the process and see where that would take me, but, as it happened, the show itself ended up being an extension of that experiment.
I initially wanted to create something quite gimmicky that would be entertaining; something technological. But the more I came to understand the technology side of things, it brought me closer to wanting to create something that was more of an anti-performance, as it were.
What lessons have you learnt from your previous experience at the Edinburgh Fringe?
I did the Fringe last year and it was a struggle. The biggest struggle here is the challenge of getting the audience in; you get obsessed and preoccupied with audience numbers.
People come to this festival with so many expectations, and people believe that because they’ve put so much time, effort, hard work and love into their craft, that they are owed something.
You can’t not care about how the show is doing: you want people to like it, but I think it is really about how you measure success.
I think too many people measure that success in their audience numbers and how many five-star reviews they get. I think that is the mistake that a lot of people make.
What makes the Edinburgh Fringe so special?
I think part of what makes the Fringe so special is the community and the people.
I’ve barely been here for a week and I’ve had so many wonderful conversations with so many interesting people.
It makes you feel so incredibly lucky to be here, it is an incredibly privileged thing to be doing.
I was talking to someone yesterday about how we’re here just mucking around. Essentially spending all of this money on a very expensive holiday while we just muck around on stage and try and sell ideas to each other.
What is it actually like performing every day for a month?
It really is exhausting when you are performing every single day. You take for granted what that does to your nervous system; you get this huge adrenaline spike every single day, and then you’ve got to come down again.
You’re just walking, not eating properly, grabbing things on the go, and you just get incredibly run down. It’s the longest month of your life; it feels more like six months!
Tickets for the Edinburgh Fringe are available here.
