Lehrstück

The Lehrstücke (plural form; singular: Lehrstück) are a radical and experimental form of modernist theatre developed by Bertolt Brecht and his collaborators from the 1920s to the late 1930s. The Lehrstücke stem from Brecht's Epic Theatre techniques but as a core principle explore the possibilities of learning through acting, playing roles, adopting postures and attitudes etc. and hence no longer divide between actors and audience. Brecht himself translated the term as learning-play, emphasizing the aspect of learning through participation, whereas the German term could also be understood as teaching-play. Reiner Steinweg goes so far as to suggest adopting a term coined by the Brazilian avant garde theatre director Zé Celso, Theatre of Discovery, as being even clearer.

Although the texts have a highly formal, rigorous structure, this is designed to facilitate insertions or deletions (according to the exigencies of the particular project). With no actor / audience separation, the emphasis in performance is upon the process rather than upon evincing a final product. This diminishes an alienating division within the theatrical apparatus—characteristically deployed in bourgeois society, and involving a fourth wall—a virtual wall that facilitates, and encourages, a distinction between producers and artistic labourers versus their means of production. The terms of that relationship are contradictory, insofar as ownership of the means of production alienates the labour of the artist. The distinction is no longer operative in the Lehrstücke, Brecht argues.

The primary purpose, intention, or goal of these performances is for the actors to acquire attitudes (rather than to consume an entertainment). This relates to Brecht's theory of Gestus, his substitution for traditional drama's mimesis. The relation to reality is a critical one. Brecht's refunctioned mimesis is understood not as a simple mirroring or imitation, but as a measuring; it always involves some kind of attitude on our part. It is not possible, in Brecht's view, to produce a neutral mimesis. Brecht's poem "On Imitation" elaborates this notion succinctly:

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