With a driving passion for acting and animation, Berkeley Institute head boy and would-be film director Tashel Bean has an unconventional dream.“I want to be the first film director to win best picture at the Oscar Awards for an animated film,” he told The Royal Gazette.Some of Tashel’s latest creations, including an animated series set in a school called ‘Deeds and Words’, can be found on YouTube. The show’s opening theme clip has garnered close to 9,000 online views thus far.Animated on his computer, the show is “more mature than my previous work”, said Tashel, recalling his first series inspired by the routines of ‘Southpark’.Dead set on studying film and animation at the Savannah College of Art and Design, following his Berkeley graduation this June, Tashel is currently at work on a play to be hosted at the high school.“I don’t want to give away too much,” he said. “But it’s about a woman trying to change a man.”The play will premier at Berkeley next month.He said: “Ever since I can remember, way before I ever wanted to become a playwright, I was always writing out situations that I wanted to see.“Even when I was little and watching ‘Sesame Street’, I’d write my own script for it. I’ve been putting on plays for a long time now, and here at the Berkeley Institute I’ve had three major plays.“A couple of years ago, with the after school group the Berkeley Players, we put on a play I’d written called ‘Zeshaun Spikes’, which is about a teenage track star who gets his girlfriend pregnant and gets involved in drugs.“The next one, ‘Under the Eyes of St Kashae’, is a play I wrote for GCSE acting. I acted in that one, and got to play the main villain. The third was for our Christmas show.“I wrote and acted in a carnival adaptation of the Disney classic ‘The Little Mermaid’. I’m no singer, but I sang in it too.”The 18-year-old acknowledged his family roots: mother Tianja Bean enjoyed a singing career under the stage name of Tanya; father Shelton Bean is a drummer active on the local scene.“I like to keep busy,” he said, noting his roles as a prefect and member of the student council, along with the football club and the group Future Business Leaders of Bermuda.With graduation imminent, Tashel and friends have also planned a fundraiser to help out their fellow students.He said: “We’re trying to have a production with acting, singing and all the arts together, to raise funds for some students that need a little extra to get their graduation tickets and tuxedos. We’re doing a special for people that are twins, because that’s double cost.”With so much in his plate, Tashel’s advice is: “If you want to get into the arts, start young. Find other people interested in what you’re doing. It’s hard to do these kinds of things by yourself. In a group of people, it gets a whole lot easier to just say ‘Let’s put on a production’.”www.youtube.com, www.scad.edu.