BWW catches up with Ratbags Theatre to chat about bringing How To Art to the 2026 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Tell us a bit about How To Art
How to Art is an award-winning clown-fruit-mash-up about making art, surviving and chasing mass a-peel. The show follows two bananas who wake up duct-taped to the wall of an art gallery and embark on an absurd journey of self-discovery.
Despite the name, How to Art is no manual (we’re still figuring that part out). For us, How to Art is about the art of living, set to the ridiculous tune of the contemporary art world. Every show is different, and each new audience decides where we place our value in this world for sale (wallets required for this nightly experiment!).
As two fruit-clowns with a lot of love to give, we’d definitely recommend sitting closer to the front if you want to experience what it takes to be part of our wider ‘bunch’.
What was the inspiration behind it?
We wanted to create something that spoke to our experience of trying to make art in a world not built for us (see: global funding cuts, hustle culture, becoming your own commodity). Early on in our devising process, we developed a special affinity with the banana of Maurizio Cattelan’s artwork ‘Comedian’ - a banana duct-taped to a wall that sold for 6.2m USD. Our burnt-out brains couldn't reconcile it against the fact that some weeks, buying fruit is a luxury for an artist.
Clowning can hold comedy and tragedy together, so rather than lamenting, we embodied that infamously priced banana and doubled it for extra fun. The result became How to Art, our riotous celebration of trying to find some meaning within the absurdity of it all. Yes, it’s bananas. It’s also political, personal and exhausting (the show and the grind!).
Why bring it to Edinburgh?
Edinburgh Fringe is a dream for many artists, but when you live on the other side of the world (Aotearoa New Zealand), that can feel more like a fantasy. The risks are no joke, but after four critically acclaimed and award-winning seasons of How to Art across NZ/Australia, we realised that this was the one to place our bets on. It’s been met with critical acclaim, and has an immersive nature that comes alive in a festival setting.
We’ve heard the Fringe is an equally exciting and gruelling month - very fitting for the themes of our physically gruelling and exciting show. It’s going to be life-imitating-art-imitating-life, and we can’t wait!
Who would you like to come and see it?
If you’ve ever walked through an art gallery and thought, ‘why can’t I touch anything?’, ‘could I have done that?’, or ‘is that REALLY worth more than my salary?’, then this show is for you! We’re looking for people who like to laugh, 'bunch', and go all in on bidding wars.
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How to Art by Ratbags Theatre, Underbelly Cowgate (Iron Belly), 5-30 Aug (not 17, 24), 21:40 (60 mins)
https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/how-to-art
Credit: Jake Dennis
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