Brass Band

“People change, but the music stays the same.”

It happened in 1923. It happened in 1945. It happened yesterday. It is still happening. A documentary about history that is more than just a documentary about us. When we open up old wounds and go in search of the culprits, it becomes necessary to dig up and count the bones. Do you want to know what it would be like to attend a dance party after the Second World War? Have you ever seen the festive opening of a Czech “Sokol” hall? And would you grant your enemies a monument? Come and experience it all.

Brass Band is the story of one small town where time seems to have stood still. One pub, one event that the people would prefer to forget. But unfortunately that isn’t possible. The victims have caught up with their murderers, although nobody knows who they are. Or will someone be found after all?

About the company

The Prague based VOSTO5 Theatre is a non-state non-profit organization that has been active in the area of performing arts for already more than 17 years. As far its organizational side is concerned, it is an independent grouping that functions on the basis of a production unit and that initiates and creates new theatre projects and performances on its own. Its program is dedicated to devised authorial theatre and it has created a number of shows that are typical with its fresh humour and poetics. VOSTO5 is a generation theatre combining the poetics of modern cabaret growing on text-appeal roots, satirical observations and especially the ability of creating author performances based on exaggeration, improvisation and mystification. Since its beginnings, Vosto5 has preferred to meet with the audience, openly communicate with it and consider it as its partner, rather then merely perform staged performances for the audience. Vosto5 draws its themes mainly from the domestic Czech environment, but it attempts to view Czech society from a detached point of view and within the current European context. The ability to grasp a worn-out motive, theme, situation or atmosphere — which are dormant in the subconsciousness of our society — and place them into the context of today and thus draw attention to their uniqueness, is a method that the Vosto5 Theatre has made its own. The Vosto5 Theatre offers its audience a view of our society through the eyes of a generation that experienced its childhood and early puberty still in the era of the communist totality, but that embarked on its active life only after the change of regimes in 1989.

The nucleus of the theatre is formed by a quintuplet of graduates from the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (DAMU): Petr Prokop, Ondřej Cihlář, Jiří Havelka, Tomáš Jeřábek a Ondřej Bauer. In addition to its own productions, the VOSTO5 Theatre also has allied artists from the areas of film, fine arts and music that represent their generation. Visit www.vosto5.cz for more information!