If you reviewed your own show, how would you describe it?
A car crash, if the crash was made up of clown cars and had driven off the side of a bridge into an underwater gay bar, full of oddballs with webbed toes and lipstick stained teeth. 12 stars.
Tell me a little more about your show and what audiences can expect?
The Nearly Naked Show is a reclamation of my naked body in all its gory glory, told through alternative comedy, cabaret and drag. It’s like Goosebumps for grownups, it’s weird and silly and confusing and full of reveals and larger than life characters who are all part of the freak show of Fanny Bleach’s mind.
Born from a place of defiance and protest, I wanted to make a show that was entirely mine. I call the shots and I choose how much and how little of myself I give to the audience. In other words, a 55 minute cock tease. Someone once described it as a Mighty Boosh and Leigh Bowery mashup and I think that’s pretty accurate.
Can you talk about some of the creative team involved?
Bighead Comedy is producing it, Miz Barber has been helping me with the dramaturgy and keeps reminding me what the point of it all is when I’m close to breakdown, and my sister Freya made my costumes! We spent 2 feverish days sitting in her house, whilst I tried to sew 25 eyes to an IKEA bag, during this time she completed every other costume…
But the show itself is kind of my baby, every character and scenario is a part of me.
Where do you draw inspiration from for your work, both in terms of creation and performance?
I LOVED the Mighty Boosh growing up, and I think that reads in my work. TNNS is very silly, DIY and punk. I’m a big fan of League Of Gentleman, and I’m obsessed with everything that Julia Davis creates. I also find music really inspiring, I love Fever Ray, The B52’s I’m a huge PEACHES fan and her shows give me so much inspiration and energy.
I also draw inspiration from Goosebumps, Buffy, Demon Headmaster, anything by John Waters, Whitby Dracula Experience, The Hoppings (Geordies know), ghost trains at funfairs, sticky sensations and fluff you find down the side of the sofa.
Next week I’m taking mushrooms in the hope it opens some new, fresh and even weirder doors in my brain. Doors I haven’t opened yet. In a fun way, not to be annoying.
Looking at this production, how would you say it links to previous work personally and thematically?
My background in sketch comedy bleeds into all that I do, one of the characters was actually written for my all female comedy sketch group Your Aunt Fanny.
I won the ‘Top Of The Slops’ drag competition a few years ago and we had to create a new act each week and prepare for a lip sync performance. The rigorous nature of this prepared me to create work fast and to draw inspiration from characters I already knew. My work is always prop heavy…yes I hide behind my props, reveal after reveal after reveal. I pull stuff out of my pants and bra over and over again and I think I probably always will. Whatever that is, is my style.
Why is this an important story to tell?
AFAB bodies being grotesque on stage in front of strangers is always important. I think the story behind the show and the fact that something positive and powerful can come from it is an important message. TNNS was a means to process being groomed by a director at drama school. This experience and the investigation which followed left me feeling so small, then one morning I woke up from a dream where my fanny sang ‘I did it my way’… So I made a show that was entirely mine, and I did everything my way.
Selfishly it’s an important story for me to tell, creating the show and taking control of a situation I felt helpless in has been a kind of therapy for me, a therapy all of my loved ones have to pay to come see. Sorry about that.
What would you like audiences to take away from seeing you at the Fringe?
I literally just want them to have a laugh. I want them to feel good and feel like they’ve escaped the real world for a bit and are being smothered by One Tit Wonders ample singular bosom, and rocked by BagHags plastic arms and kissed all over by Sharon the call centre slut. If they leave smiling, I’m happy. If men leave confused I’m happier.
Do you tend to take inspiration from events happening in the world around you in terms of your work? Do you think artists have a responsibility to respond to what’s happening?
I think if you’re a well known artist with a platform then you have a responsibility to respond to the dog shit politics of the world right now, you have sway and I really respect those artists that use their platform for good. I don’t think every artist must make ‘political art’. I like that the art I make can feel like an escape from the horrors of the outside world. I want to create an environment where you forget everything that’s going on outside those four walls and you leave laughing and feeling a bit lighter, that sometimes feels political enough.
Art is political and that’s a good thing, but I have seen too much art created by artists who don’t understand that particular topic and it feels like they’re trying to make me feel something. I hate that. It feels fake and wet and boring and as an audience member you feel patronised.
Sometimes I think a woman being gross and weird and frightening men is enough.
What do you do to relax in August?
Drink.
That’s half a lie. I’m hoping where I’m staying has some green around it and I can go running, but I bet I’ll never put my trainers on once. I’m staying with my mate Til Fletcher and we love to drink wine and slag people off, so I’m hoping we get as much of that in as possible.
How do you feel about the current arts landscape in your country and your part in it? Does it excite you and inspire you to keep pushing the boat out?
Not to be a Debbie Downer but I think it’s completely fucked. There’s no funding. A year ago I went to the Leigh Bowery exhibition at The Tate and left crying. And not just because loads of them died, but because they experienced London at a time when you could be on the dole
and make art. Your entire existence was dressing up mad and partying, and creating wild art and meeting people and doing fantastic drugs. Now you can’t be on the dole as a self employed artist and be left alone to do what you’re best at. I don’t see it getting any better, I don’t think our country values artists but I literally can’t do anything else so I’ll probably just keep at it until I die penniless with no pension.
Why are arts festivals such as the Fringe so important for international exchange?
Culturally it’s obviously important to meet people from all walks of life and it’s a great space to do that, engaging with people’s art and practice all over the world without having to book any flights can only make your own art improve. However, it’s not an accessible festival so I highly doubt you’re going to get many people from say Palestine or Iran coming over and being platformed, which is shit.
What can the wider arts community do to get more people involved in their specific disciplines?
Everyone needs funding, that’s it. There’s so many disciplines I want to try but without the money it’s impossible to consider. It would be great if we could do exchanges, like I’ll help you get your tits out to music and you can help me make a plant pot. I’d love that.
Have you got your eye on any other shows that are part of the programme?
In Bed With My Brother, I’ve never seen them perform before and I’ve heard incredible things. They’re also just really great crack so I know it’ll be a good time.
Television by my mate Til Fletcher, she’s an absolute crease and I’ve loved watching the show grow.
What’s next for you and how are you feeling about the future in general?
I already have an idea for my next show, it’s about female temptation and so far I know there will be lots of hair and a costume made of bubble wrap. Whether I could ever afford the Fringe again is a question for another day. However I am determined to keep creating!
During Autumn, Your Aunt Fanny will be touring our new sketch show CREASE and I will be performing in Alicia Meehan’s movement piece What Adult Am I?.I will also be exhibiting in Uncanny Water’s project at APT Gallery in Deptford, performing as my Geordie worm character and presenting the costume I made for our last project at Deptford Creekside Centre. I will be making a short film about the growing pains of being a worm called ‘would you still love me if I was a teenage worm’ so obviously not to be missed.
At Christmas time Your Aunt Fanny will be performing our Christmas show You’re Not Me Ma at Northern Stage in Newcastle which will be absolutely class.
Autumn is looking busy already, which I’m actually feeling pretty good about. It’ll be so lush to go straight into working with my best mates again after a month performing on me tod. Check out mine and YAF’S insta for updates @yourauntfanny @fannybleach
How can Edinburgh audiences keep up with you beyond the festival?
Everything I do will be on my insta @fannybleach and on my website https://emmacrowley-bennett.my.canva.site/
Anything else?
Just come and see it for yourself, help a lass out and pay for my £5 dindins at Mosque Kitchen every night.
Fanny Bleach: The Nearly Naked Show, Assembly Roxy, until 30 Aug, 9.50pm