The sofa here is not a place to sit out the action. It stands right in the middle of things, on the stage of Hoppes Hoftheater. At times, guests take a seat there during the programme; sometimes people even dance on stage. At the living-room concert with Sunshine Brass, the audience is not always just on the other side. It can become part of the story itself.

The band from Suhl brings Dixieland and swing – and a drummer who has more to say than just musically. Thomas Henkel is the main speaker for Sunshine Brass. But the story is not his alone: the whole band gets drawn in, willingly or unwillingly. The musicians are not merely providing the music for a theatrical format. They themselves are part of the performance, combining wordplay and concert.

A living room on a theatre stage is a fitting starting point for that. It does not quite follow the usual order of auditorium and stage area. Where the sofa stands, guests can also become performers; the usual distance between band and audience turns into a shared space for play.

Rolf Hoppe founded the private theatre in 1995 in a former barn in Dresden-Weißig. Since 2024, the living-room concert has taken place here, always with Sunshine Brass. The previous evenings were sold out. For this format, the Hoftheater is long since more than just a random address: the stage set up as a living room is part of its history.

Before the concert and during the interval, Ulrike Hausmann takes over the piano. The Dresden pianist plays boogie-woogie and blues, mainly her own compositions. In this way, the solo piano steps out alongside the band sound. And this also has a connection with home: at Rent Parties in the 1920s, piano was played in private apartments in American cities. The admission money helped the hosts pay their rent. Hausmann's contributions thus draw on a music that also found its place in living rooms - before Sunshine Brass takes over the stage living room with Dixieland, swing and witty wordplay.