Aim

HEY YOU, dumb-dumb, to go back to school! But beware, your old dinnerladies are taking over the school. Come to class, it's gonna be a RIOT.

“Unmissable” (Reviews Hub) and “Unhinged” (British Comedy Guide) Lady Bolognese, are bringing their Leicester Comedy Award-winning debut, CLASS WAR, to Edinburgh Fringe 2026.

CLASS WAR is a Bouffon-Clown show that transports the audience back to the classroom; just in time for school dinnerladies, Barbara and Veronica, to replace their missing teacher. Barbara and Veronica encourage the naughtiest children to test their authority - because everybody wants to see what happens when someone steps out of line. And after all, it’s their last day, so they’ve got nothing left to lose… 

Come to class. It's gonna be a RIOT. 

"The kind of warped humour that makes the League of Gentlemen seem positively cosy by comparison" (Beyond the Joke)

As the audience relives the frightening experience of being a small child receiving the wrong type of potato, we encourage them to rebel, creating high-risk moments that we love to play with. We’re interested in how much risk audience members will take, and how much they will trust these oddly familiar characters. Once they’re complicit in the madness, the show becomes both a spectacle and a playground for our audiences. 

We’ve drawn on our experiences working as support staff in schools, noticing how the privilege of parental choice vividly illustrates class divides. We use horror and drag elements to cartoon a ‘rebellion of the oppressed’, drawing on traditional Bouffon roots from Ancient Greek and Medieval theatre. Most of all, the show is an ode to those absolutely bananas older women with bright red hair and blue eyeliner, who are always underestimated.

The magic of our show is that adults love being horrible little kids again. And there is no upper age restriction to this magic - our audiences have ranged between 16-80. Everyone wants to be naughty!

SHOW HISTORY

Since 2024, CLASS WAR has been robustly road-tested, through gigs and preview shows in London, Brighton, Leicester, Suffolk and a week-long Work-in-Progress run at PBH Free Fringe in 2025. 

The show is now ready and signed up for a full-run at the Pleasance. (Bunker 3, 23:00.)

Here are The Reasons we are asking for financial support from our friends, audiences and arts-lovers etc.:

• Edinburgh is incredibly expensive, and the financial burden is placed solely on the artists. We need an extra £6,000 to bring the show to Edinburgh this year. 
• There are some grants and funds available but we run the risk of not being awarded these funds. We have been unsuccessful in receiving 'Keep It Fringe' funding, after the fund was slashed - now covering only 16 shows instead of 180 (as in 2025).
• Tanika, director of Ozzy Algar: Speed Queen, and Alice Cockayne: I Showered Before I Came, is a working-class artist from a low-income background. Finances have, and continue to be, an enormous barrier to her career in the arts. 
• Producers! We have been self-producing for 11 months across our NINETEEN stupendously fun work-in-progress/preview shows. But it has been tough-going. So, we will now be working with established producers, Leibenspiel, to help us get the show the best audiences it can - but producers are expensive and we need help covering the costs.
• Costumes, makeup, props, set pieces, other horrible things - we don't have much of this, but it does add up. We need to buy about 2 extra costumes EACH before this run because costumes need to be washed after each show. If you came to see our 8-day Free Fringe WIP in 2025, we're so sorry for how stinky we were. We only had one costume each - and we get quite sweaty... Never again. 

Budgeting and Fundraising

• We have a Big Budget spreadsheet, and we have broken up our costs, and kept things as low and as DIY as possible, but its still looking like we will need to spend at least £8,000 to get this show to Edinburgh.
• This fundraiser will complement our other fundraising events; we have been doing previews of the show in Regional and Community Arts Venues, and we will be running bouffon and clown/bouffon/duo workshops to raise money as well.

Thanks for giving this a read, and double thanks if you donate. 

Love, 

Lady Bolognese (Tanika & Matt) <3

If you have just stumbled across this fundraiser and you don't know who we are, find us on Instagram and Tiktok @realladybol

Funding method

Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made by 1st July 2026 at 1:51pm