Who’s In? Imagining All at the Augsburg Brecht Festival

When Brecht gets branded into the mainstream, what is left to see?

In this session, Tehran-born Sahar Rahimi, Artistic Director of the Augsburg Brecht Festival (Brechtfestival Augsburg), explored urban culture, festival curation, and inclusive practices to share how Brechtian thought can be revitalized within contemporary cities.

As the city that birthed Brecht, Augsburg, located in Bavaria, Germany, has always had a conflicted relationship with his legacy. Rahimi noted that Brecht chose to settle in East Germany (DDR) rather than return to Bavaria due to his leftist political stance, maintaining a cold distance from conservative Augsburg for decades. Even with the eventual appearance of Brechtstraße (Brecht Street), memorials, and tourism campaigns, this underlying tension never truly vanished.

Reviewing the festival’s recent trajectory, Rahimi noted that Brechtfestival originally operated as a standard cultural commemoration. Recently, however, it has pivoted toward highly political and activist programming.

Successive artistic directors have steered the ship in distinct directions: shifting from early iterations focused on historical tribute and large-scale cultural programming to later editions that embraced activist art, post-colonial discourse, and immigrant community engagement. For instance, former Artistic Director Julian Warner famously relocated events to immigrant-heavy suburbs, coining a provocative thesis: “If Brecht were alive today, he would be writing for immigrants.”

For Rahimi, the objective, rather than a dogmatic loyalty to Brecht’s texts, is an extension of his radical skepticism toward social structures and modes of perception. Consequently, she anchors the festival's contemporary core in inclusion (Inklusion).

Rahimi argues that inclusion means far more than just disability participation in the arts; it demands a fundamental restructuring of the theatrical apparatus itself. For example, incorporating performers with physical or cognitive disabilities completely upends conventional rehearsal rhythms, forcing a total recalibration of time, communication, and creative methodologies.

Drawing from her long-standing work with the Monster Truck theater collective, Rahimi remains deeply invested in the intersection of embodiment, identity politics, and performance. She believes that collaborating with diverse bodies and backgrounds forces an inspection of our own blind spots, yielding alternative perspectives on the world. Art, therefore, must stop serving only the elite few who speak fluent theater and instead become a democratic house for friction and encounter.

This philosophical framework directly shaped the festival's spatial footprint. This year, the festival headquarters occupied a vacant department store in front of the City Hall. This idle commercial architecture was systematically reclaimed and transformed into a civic hub where performance stages, cafes, workshops, and communal lounges coexist. Passersby entirely detached from the art world could simply drift in to grab a coffee, rest with their children, or idle away the afternoon.

Furthermore, admission fees are eliminated, as Rahimi states flatly: “The moment a ticket is required, you institutionalize exclusion.”

To dismantle these structural barriers, the festival leaned heavily into absolute accessibility (Barrierefreiheit). Wheelchair access, sign language interpretation, surtitles, audio descriptions, tactile tours, and relaxed performances were treated as baseline logistical prerequisites. The festival even published a simplified edition (Leichte Sprache) of its program booklet, providing accessible vocabulary and enlarged typography so that individuals with learning difficulties could navigate the lineup with ease.

Rahimi observes that art has historically adopted a top-down, intellectually patronizing posture. In response, she seeks a festival that opens to all, rather than a playground reserved for the culturally privileged. This drove the Brechtfestival’s core slogan: ALLE (Everyone)—a radical, universal invitation.

Ultimately, the festival functions less as a passive viewing gallery and more as a site of collision for disparate demographics, generations, subcultures, and communities. Whether through active dialogue, participation, or a simple, shared presence, the festival attempts to reconstruct the very possibility of Community.

Yet, Rahimi leaves us with a sharp, lingering interrogation: When art boldly claims to belong to "everyone," who is actually standing inside the room, and who remains outside, locked out in the cold?

To close the lecture, Rahimi shared an intimate story about her mother hand-weaving a festival poster into fabric. This small, domestic gesture bridges the vast chasm between art and reality. While Augsburg remains a space where art can be freely celebrated, other corners of the globe remain cast in the shadow of war and geopolitical upheaval. Art may not have the power to structurally alter reality, but it remains a vital way of reaching out into the dark.