BRASS BAND MUSIC

Jiří Havelka , Karel Tománek

Cast: variable (20 men, 10 women)

People change but brass band music stays.

It happened in 1923. It happened in 1945. It happened yesterday. It happens all the time. A historical documentary that is more like a documentary about ourselves. When old wounds are being reopened and we are looking for who is to blame, it is necessary to dig out and count the bones. Would you like to know how you would feel at a country dance after the World War II? Have you ever seen an opening ceremony of a Sokol gymnasium? And would you be glad if they built a memorial for your enemies? Come and get the experience.

Brass band music is a story of a small town where the time seems to have stopped. One pub, one event and people that would like to forget. However, it is not possible. The victims have caught up with their murderers but no one knows who they actually are. Or maybe someone does, after all?

An authorial project Brass band music produced by the Vosto5 Theatre is not a traditional drama. As for the genre, it is a documentary drama that is a basis for a theatrical experience.

The subject matter is an authentic historical event that happened in a small village of Dobronín in the Jihlava region where a group of local Germans were killed during a violent expulsion of the German inhabitants after the World War II. However, the goal is not to try to find out who is guilty or analyse the reasons but to portray a memory of one place, in this case a cultural hall. The play is about the transformation of time, and thus consciousness within the same space.

The three scenes of the play create a completely authentic impression. As if we were watching a cut-out of reality, making the time and space of three significant moments of one small town present. The play does not have a typical theatre structure. The theatre time is trying to portray a real time flow; things, situations and microstories are happening at the same time, simultaneously and parallelly. It creates a big picture where you now and then notice a specific detail. All three scenes take place in the same space: the same hall, the same small town. They are thus all connected by the space. However, the time is different and it is always a unique moment.

The play is available in the Czech original.