Brecht gebrauchen (To Use Brecht) is a hefty compilation of essays and conversations that comes out of a four-day conference on Brecht's Lehrstücke at the Villa Vigoni, a German-Italian center for European excellence, in March of 2015. The closely defined topic and the length of the conference allowed the nineteen participants to present their individual research and discuss the Lehrstücke with a rare attention to detail, doing justice to what the editors call “Vielfalt des Materials” (“diversity of materials”). The book is divided into longer essays and transcriptions of conversations and discussions, which create what the editors call a “dialogical structure.”

The diverse contributions begin with Florian Vaßen's theses on “Brecht's Lehrstückkonzeption” (“Brecht's concept of the learning play”) designed to introduce the conversations at the Villa Vigoni. One thesis states that the concept of the Lehrstück serves “zunehmend als Modell für sehr unterschiedliche Theaterformen” (“increasingly as a model for very different theater forms”) (3), something that numerous papers and discussions in this volume support. Thomas Martin contributes a portrait of the late Brecht and his fight for a different theater, a theater as a “kleine wendige Kampfform” (“small versatile method of struggle”) that can effectively tackle questions of everyday life. Vaßen's essay on “Lehrstück und Alterität” (“learning play and alterity”) reads the Lehrstücke as learning plays and concentrates on “Selbstverständigung, Fremdheitserfahrung und pluralisierte Identität” (“self-understanding, experience of foreignness, and pluralized identity”) (51). Milena Massalongo's first of two substantial essays analyze how Brecht's concept of the Lehrstück is directed against the abstract participation of a general audience and instead seeks an “Einbruch in den Lebenszusammenhang” (“incursion into the life context”), to destroy the “Schein von Emanzipation” (“appearance of emancipation”) (60), which works to overcome the separation of abstract thought and Life.