The Society for Cultural Relations between the Peoples of the British Commonwealth and the USSR (SCR) was founded in 1924, following the establishment of diplomatic relations between Great Britain and the new Soviet state. The Society's founding members were a group of key British and Soviet artists and intellectuals of the day, including E.M. Forster, Julian Huxley, Maynard Keynes, Bertrand Russell, Sybil Thorndyke, Alexei Tolstoy, Virginia Woolf, Konstantin Yuon - and Huntly Carter. Carter gave the Society's first lecture in December 1924, was central to the curation of its first exhibition in May 1925, and remained a member until his death in 1942. This article discusses Carter's contribution to the work of the SCR, focusing especially on his dissemination of knowledge about the new Soviet theatre in Britain. It provides information about the Society's Huntly Carter Collection, donated after his death by his friend and supporter, the M.P. Joseph King.
This article explores the content and provenance of the Huntly Carter Papers, which were acquired by the Hesburgh Libraries, University of Notre Dame, as part of the Herbert P. J. Marshall Collection. The article tells the history of this important acquisition and also examines the circumstances that led to the acquisition of the Herbert P. J. Marshall Collection by the University of Notre Dame in the early 1990s. It describes the scope and organization of the Huntly Carter Papers. The article underscores the importance of the Marshall Collection and especially the Huntly Carter Papers for the study of early Soviet theatre, cinema, and literature and for European and British avant-garde culture.
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?
