Lehrstücke

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Lehrstücke (learning plays) are a radical, experimental form of modernist theatre created by Bertolt Brecht and his collaborators from the 1920s to the 1930s. They come from Brecht’s epic theatre ideas but focus on learning through acting, roles, and attitudes, so there is no clear separation between actors and the audience. Brecht called them a “learning-play,” while the German term can be read as “teaching-play.”

How they work
- The performances are formal and structured, but designed to be easily adapted for different projects.
- There is no strict actor–audience division; the process is more important than producing a finished show.
- The goal is to help actors develop certain attitudes and ways of looking at the world, not just to entertain.
- Brecht’s idea of Gestus (a deliberate social attitude or stance) replaces traditional dramatic imitation. Reality is examined critically, not simply copied.
- The play is not a neutral mirror; it is a tool to measure and critique reality.

Key ideas
- The performance aims to reveal social and political issues and to provoke thought, not to provide passive entertainment.
- Brecht encouraged questioning and change, even using questionnaires at the end of performances and rewriting plays based on audience responses.

Form and function
- Lehrstücke try to fuse form and content into a higher purpose: function. The question becomes “What is the end, and what means help achieve it?”
- The approach seeks a dialectical relationship among form, content, and function, and it encourages active interaction between actors and the text, as well as between performance and audience.

Legacy and influence
- Brecht eventually abandoned the Lehrstücke, but the idea influenced later dramatists like Heiner Müller and Augusto Boal.
- Boal expanded the concept with Theatre of the Oppressed, especially Forum Theatre, where spectators can step onto the stage and actively shape the drama (spect-actors), dissolving the barrier between spectators and performers.
- German peace researcher Reiner Steinweg used Lehrstücke to develop self‑reflective, peace-education work and local anti‑war activism, demonstrating the real-world educational potential of the form.