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.
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.
Brecht eventually abandoned his experiments with the Lehrstücke form, but it has been taken up and developed in the last few decades by the postmodernist dramatist Heiner Müller (in plays such as Mauser (1975) and The Mission (1982)) and by the Brazilian director Augusto Boal.
Boal's "forum theatre" took the abolition of the actor–audience division proposed by Brecht and realized it through the use of what he calls a "spect-actor"—a member of the audience who is able to get up onto the stage to actively intervene in the drama presented.
Brechts Theorie einer politisch-ästhetischen Erziehung) to develop his own self-reflexive peace-activist educational work, which initiated his local activism project "Gewalt in der Stadt".