LONDON – Students in Lauren Barri-Holstein’s “Theatre and its Others” class got quite an introduction to performance theatre last month.

In the introductory presentation, the Queen Mary University of London PhD student and “actress,” played a video from her production Splat!, which features her vagina in a starring role, The Telegraph reports.

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“The intimate performance shows her inserting a knife handle into her vagina and throwing red tomatoes at the blade, giving birth to a small, plastic Bambi figurine, and inflating a condom,” according to the news site.

“Barri-Holstein, creator of theatre company The Famous, said the work – which also shows scenes in which she urinated on stage and dangled naked from a harness – is relevant to her teaching module.”

In another scene shown to students, Barri-Holstein simulates masturbation with a tampon and spays fake blood on a cast mate’s face, the Mirror reports.

“It was surreal. I honestly didn’t know how to react. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to look her in the eye in person, it’s just weird,” one student told the university newspaper, The Tab.

“It’s not even the fact that we saw her lady parts, it’s the fact I literally have no idea how the clip was in any way related to this module,” the freshman continued. “It was just so extreme and I don’t understand why it was in any way necessary.”

Other students are aren’t sure what to think.

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“I understand her aim is to actively gross out the audience and challenge us, which does actually make sense,” another freshman said. “She’s really passionate about exposing our socially ingrained expectations, so I’m going to suspend my judgement and wait until I get to know her better as a teacher.”

Barri-Holstein described the clip as “feminist performance art concerned with the female body.” The class syllabus states the “module looks at what is specific to the form of theatre, by exploring how to achieve, in theatre, effects and meanings found in other art forms.”

And while Barri-Holstein’s freshmen were a little shocked by the class introduction, a sophomore told Metro that she’s actually really “amazing,” and hopes they won’t be “scared off by how open she is.”

Readers’ reactions were as mixed as students.

“Where do I sign up for this course?” Andrew Glibbery posted to Facebook.

Rebecca Mark Morgan thinks Barri-Holstein “shouldn’t be allowed to teach.

“You can do anything and call it art. But really it’s disgusting and depraved,” she wrote. “Not just to do that, but to show the students. There’s something seriously wrong with that woman.”

“Looks like one of those shows where people do stuff just because they can, not because it’s good or in any way relevant,” Liz Westmoreland posted. “Boring.”