How to Revive Huntly Carter

In 2023, I wrote a play, The Revival of Huntly Carter, which received a staged reading in Oxford. This essay reflects on the process which set me on a path of exploring Carter's legacy. It looks at how academic studies of Carter, theatre history, and the role of music in left-wing theatre influenced the choice of content: the play needed to reflect the influences upon Carter, and it had to be entertaining, using the theatrical devices which he himself admired – song, presentational theatre, melodrama, agit-prop. The process highlighted the fundamental gaps in our knowledge of Carter's biography and legacy: why, after four books, thirty years of media articles, and correspondence with leading European theatre makers, is he not better known? What should we make of his efforts at inspiring radical forms of workers’ theatre in 1920s Britain? And what can actors, directors and writers of today learn from him?