Bessie Wapp: Pandora’s Jukebox Performance Events
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Oxygen Art Centre 3-320 Vernon St, Enter from Alley, Nelson, British Columbia V1L 4B7
Fredrick Stuart Church, "Pandora," n.d.
Oxygen Art Centre’s winter artist in residence, Bessie Wapp invites us to cultivate our curiosity in a revisioning of the ancient Greek Pandora myth. Wapp spent the month of December engaged in studio-based research and creation towards a participatory, theatrical, and especially musical, experience. She is now ready to open the project to the public as a work-in-progress via a series of interactive online zoom events. Equal parts storytelling, song, historical examination, and personal reflection, Pandora’s Jukebox upends the problematic original myth, and seeks to transform our collective burdens into soul medicine: music!
Hosted events run from January 14th until January 30th, 2022. Space is limited to five (5)participants per event and registration is required. Interested participants can register by visiting Oxygen’s website and EventBrite links. No previous experience in singing or performance is required. Each event will be one and a half hours in duration and requires connection to Zoom. Events will not be recorded.
Bessie Wapp will also offer an artist talk on her residency and scope of the project on Wednesday, January 19th at 4:00 PM PST (Zoom). To attend, register via Event Brite links on Oxygen’s website. The participatory online events will be offered on Friday and Saturday evenings ( with the exception of January 15th) from 5:00 - 6:30 PM, and Sundays from 2:00 –3:30 PM PST. The public is invited to register online through the Oxygen Art Centre for all events.
Bessie Wapp was born in New York City and raised in the Kootenays. She is a musician, theatre-maker and educator. Wapp’s music practice involves voice, accordion, hand percussion and piano. She has performed in Europe and throughout North America. She has studied the arts at Emily Carr College of Art and Design, Vancouver Community College and Selkirk College’s Contemporary Music Program. While living in Vancouver, she worked with innovation and multi-disciplinary theatre groups such as Public Dreams, Electric Company, Radix, Ruby Slippers, Touchstones, Vancouver Moving Centre and Gamelan Madu Sari. In 2006, she relocated to Nelson where she co-founded Twin Fish Theatre. Wapp has performed in festivals and theatre productions throughout British Columbia. Wapp teaches for the Oxygen Art Centre and heads up the Blue House Choir. In 2015 Wapp was named Nelson’s Cultural Ambassador.