The show toured first in Europe, then in Asia and Australasia. The show was much-performed in Caux, and the cast played an important part in carrying the Caux conferences, and many of them also performed in other plays, and helped to run the Caux theatre. The last show was performed in Caux on 18th September 1971.
"We DO have something to declare. I’m 20, and foreigners tell me I’m typically British. I’m not sure if it is meant as a compliment. While abroad, I’ve been worried by the news from home. What with more out of work and less work done, withdrawal symptoms and the General saying “no” again, I’d say we have a national bed of nails. I can’t grasp the infighting of economic warfare, or the glory of “a hard day’s night” in defence of the pound. What can I do to solve the problems? I want to back Britain, but more-to care for the world. How?
"Last Summer, at Caux, the European centre for Moral Re-Armament, I found young and old, not hypnotized by crises. They had given up waiting for others to take action. There were people from industry, education and politics who had found a practical solution to some of their most difficult problems. Many of us decided then to change our plans, postpone university, give up jobs and savings to create a show that could give Europe an aim beyond her own borders. And so I come to be writing this introduction on behalf of this international, but largely European, cast.
"Robert Schuman, as French foreign minister wrote: “The best protection for a nation however powerful, does not lie in ‘splendid isolation’, nor in her own strength, but in solidarity with other nations who are guided by the same spirit, and undertake with her common tasks.” We found this common task. We are passionately dedicated to giving a new motive to Europe. Time wasted on our problems means lives lost in less fortunate parts of the world. If economic interest dictates military withdrawal, could Christian unselfishness ensure a moral advance, an open-hearted decision to answer the human needs of the world ?
"We are not just representatives of 16 countries, but 50 individualists who have started to find a purpose that over-arches our differences of language, temperament, class, colour, or even sense of humour.
"'Greatness does not reside as politicians seem to think in bulging banks and bellies', wrote Peter Howard. 'Britain’s greatness lies in the character of British men and women. ln the greatest crisis man has yet faced, Britain may shrug off her sloth and her lust for the second rate and by her exertions and her example show humanity how to rebuild a broken world.'
"We believe that – even the non-British in the cast. It’s the kind of British I would like to be – it’s the kind of task we would like our audiences to take up."
From the UK programme of the show, signed Andrew Stallybrass
English
