Huntly Carter, the ‘First Workers’ Theatre Movement’, and British Modernism

This essay recovers the history of the early phase of the Workers’ Theatre Movement (WTM) in Britain (1926–28). In 1928, the Hackney People's Players took over the organisation of the WTM, and most discussions of workers’ theatre focus on this later, more celebrated, phase. This has had the effect of obscuring important connections between workers’ theatre and the theatre practitioners, artists, composers, and critics associated with early modernism. In its early years the WTM aimed to use experimental drama as an agitational tool, and committee members included Aleksandr Bakshy, Huntly Carter, Edith Craig, Eden and Cedar Paul, and Christina Walshe. The fullest account of this significant moment in the history of the British theatre is found in the writings of Huntly Carter. Since the October Revolution of 1917, Carter's attention had been caught by the experimental theatres of the Soviet Union, which seemed to share his commitment to social transformation through art. This essay provides a detailed account of the development of the WTM's ideas and activities and argues that the first WTM should be remembered as an ambitious, if abortive, British avant-garde.