Bex Oliver The Experimenter Video

In my final year of the York Acting Conservatory, our class was given complete creative freedom to do a five minute video.

I came up with the idea for Bex Oliver while brainstorming in my bed one night. I knew I wanted to make something comedic since so much of our training had been with dramatic and classical text. I thought it would be fun to establish a character and perform ‘experiments’ on them to study their odd quirks and psychology. This developed into a parody of a “Bill Nye the Science Guy” episode. I was also very interested in attachment theory at the time and thought it might be fascinating to create a character based on one of the attachment styles, in this case the avoidant attachment style.

My video uses tropes from “Bill Nye the Science Guy” — DIY experiments, quirky sound effects, and song parody to delve into Bex’s relationships, behaviours, and traumas in a comedic fashion. Since there was only one performer allowed, I created and performed the five characters seen in the video. I really enjoy transforming into different characters through voice, physicality, and costume/makeup, so this was super fun for me!

I hope you enjoy the video. I would love to continue Bex’s story one day!