ASURA: An Enlightenment Experiment

ASURA presents itself as an experiment in enlightenment, built around Wayne Stewart’s creation of an AI-powered enlightenment guru. In practice, it is mostly Stewart talking through his personal experiments and the anecdotes that came from them.

Stewart is clearly charismatic and practised, but the show never quite becomes the thing its premise promises. The stories remain loosely connected rather than building into a coherent argument or experience, and the elaborate idea of an “enlightenment experiment” ends up feeling rather thinner than it sounds.

The production itself is also surprisingly slight. For most of the show, there is very little to the staging beyond Stewart and his anecdotes, and he even leaves the stage ten minutes before the intended finish.

We all come to the Fringe to be challenged, and ASURA certainly has the ambition. It just never quite works out what it has to say.

A good idea, a charismatic performer, but not a show.

Runs 7–10 August, 12–17 August, 19–24 August and 26–30 August at 5:55pm.