Fanny Bleach: I was abused by my drama teacher – he’s still working today

Emma Crowley Bennett laughs that getting into drama school was one of her greatest achievements. 

That’s ‘depressing’, she chuckles, heavy with hindsight. When she opened the acceptance letter and cried in delight with her mum, Emma didn’t know her time at East 15 acting school, from 2014 to 2017, would subject her to daily abuse from her drama teacher, veiled by the concept of ‘high art’. 

Newcastle-born Emma, 31, chose East15 for its experimental reputation. It was her first choice. ‘It has clowning, mime, all the wild stuff. I didn’t know what physical theatre was, but I knew that’s exactly what I wanted to do,’ she says. 

When she stepped into the rehearsal room, Emma was primed to be challenged, undone, and put back together again, as was the expectation of drama school: to erode its students into perfectly malleable artistic instruments. 

It was only in 2024 that Emma realised what she and her contemporaries went through was daily abuse at the hands of an exploitative professor. 

‘We were naked every day,’ Emma says. ‘I would sometimes pretend I was on my period, other women would as well. We’d say, “Oh I’m just going to keep my knickers on today.”’ 

He made them beat each other with books, to the point where one boy bled. ‘To begin with it was silly, clowning, but then… He’d say, “Now do it naked”. We would do anything he said.’ 

‘I got beaten naked,’ Emma says. ‘There’s actually a photo of this guy’s back. It’s bleeding. And he knelt over a mirror, and the mirror smashed, he got glass all in himself. At no point did this director say, “Stop now”.’ 

Emma was asked to imitate oral sex until she gagged. ‘I had to start this show overdosing. Three of my classmates would come over and pretend to put a tube around my mouth and I’d convulse. They didn’t need to do that, because it was acting, I was holding the tube anyway. But before we did it, he said, “Oh, we need to see how far something can go down Emma’s throat before she gags,”’ she remembers. 

‘Someone in my class had to put a banana down my throat, as far as it would go, till I gagged, and then mark it.’ 

Emma doesn’t remember fully, but thinks she was ‘probably naked’ at the time. They were naked most days, so she was likely naked and lying on a perspex box.  

Another instance saw the male students imitate rape on the women in the group. 

‘All the women had to lie on the floor, and the boys in the class would pick someone, and then he would go over and simulate having sex with them, but we weren’t allowed to move.’

This professor filmed the entire rehearsal process. ‘He filmed the whole thing. Everything we did every day. He filmed it all. He filmed everything and just kept it on his iPad. So all of this is somewhere.’ 

He would keep them coming back and doing whatever he said again and again by dangling their futures in front of them, telling them they would tour this show in China, all over the world. Of course, that never happened. 

‘He was a 60-odd year old man, and we were all 20 or whatever, and he would encourage us to do things, or say, “I want to see this, if you’re comfortable, take your clothes off now.” If you didn’t do it, you wouldn’t get the part. So, basically, I did everything, and I got the main parts. I remember people saying no to things, and I would be like, “That’s silly, you’re not gonna get a good part”. It’s so ingrained in you to just push yourself.’ 

During and for years after drama school, Emma talked about her experience as a ‘badge of honour’ – evidence of pushing herself to creative limits. 

‘It’s not until you get a bit older that you’re like, no, that was abuse. For what? For a shi**y little play that, like, no one gives a f**k about?’ Emma says, now in disbelief.  

Emma made a formal complaint about the director in 2024, when she heard he was working with someone whom she’d warned that he was a ‘danger to women’ previously. Then her experience unravelled in her mind for the first time. 

‘I realised, “Argh, f**k. You’re all friends,”’ she recalls. ‘You’re all the same. Everything we did was wrong. And you’re wrong.’ 

Disappointment and sadness were Emma’s overriding emotions at this time. It wasn’t a gotcha moment. 

‘In the investigation they asked me all these questions, telling me to detail all the different things that happened. And then they said, “How did you feel about him?” That’s when I got upset. I thought, “Oh, that’s quite telling”. 

‘Because I used to think he was really cool. We all saw him as a bit of a godlike father figure that cared about us and was helping us, and knew about what he was talking about. Then, suddenly, you realise that and it’s really disappointing. I just think about myself at that age, and I think that’s sad. Horrible. Sometimes it’s like it happened to someone else. Like a little sister, and I feel really bad for her.’ 

The director no longer works at East 15 acting school, but still thrives in the theatre world, with his own practice, still teaching. 

‘During the investigation, I felt really belittled by the University,’ Emma says. ‘No one was ever replying to my emails or telling me what was going on. I was really scared, because I’d never done that before, showed a person in this light, this man, this older man who I’d been in the care of. And then everyone kind of didn’t talk to me anymore.’ 

It’s hard to think this could all have gone unchecked by fellow East15 professionals at the time. But it was insinuated that whatever happens in the rehearsal room is ‘special’ and other people might ‘not understand’ the ‘incredible art’ they were making. 

Emma thinks while the tutors may have known what his art was like – that they were always naked and pushing boundaries – she isn’t sure they knew the ‘extent’ of his practices. 

‘I do think it was a different time,’ Emma says. ‘I mean, it’s not that long ago, but I do think we did a lot of stuff that wouldn’t be allowed now.’ 

Emma knows East 15 has improved since. 

‘People have been fired, and I’ve heard of different investigations about different people, for different things, who don’t work there anymore. And the fact that intimacy coordinators will be present, that’s one of the good things that came out of the investigation.’ 

Now, Emma is reclaiming nakedness in her Edinburgh Fringe show, the aptly named The Nearly Naked Show, which she wrote while the investigation was taking place. It’s a ‘freak show’, celebrating Emma’s body in all its goryness through ‘bizarre creatures’ who are all almost, but not quite naked. 

‘It’s quite satisfying to realise that I am actually a better artist than him,’ Emma beams. ‘I used to think he was bigger than he is. But no one knows him. He’s just some rank old man.’  

Nevertheless, Emma worries about bumping into him and his supporters. 

‘He’s still making cr*p art, mainly with women. People idolise him, and you do get swept up in it… When you’re young and someone’s telling you all this stuff you’ve never thought of before, you think he’s so clever. Then you realise he’s not.’

Fanny Bleach: The Nearly Naked Show is running at 9:50pm at Assembly Roxy Downstairs throughout Edinburgh Fringe. Tickets and more information is available on the website.

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