In July 1980, a one-man show about St Francis, Un Soleil en Pleine Nuit, premiered in Caux. It starred French mime artist Michel Orphelin, and was written by British playwright Hugh Steadman Williams, with music by Kathleen Johnson, also British. Michel Orphelin presented the play – in its French or English version (Poor Man, Rich Man) – in many countries over the next decade.

Su Riddell left her job as a secretary in Paris to join the backstage team as Assistant Stage Manager, aged 21, in June 1980. She toured with the play in Europe and North America for the next three years. These extracts from her letters to her parents describe the start of the adventure.

Monday 30 June, 1980

We were six in the minibus leaving Paris, including Michel Orphelin, French actor, singer and mime artist; Annie (French) who will project the backdrop slides; François, Michel’s son who will be on sound; and Peter, British pianist.

It was a lovely sunny day. We stopped for morning coffee, then a picnic in a field once we’d turned off the motorway, more coffee by a fierce and swollen river, then through the rugged and wild Jura, and lovely mellow old towns, to the Swiss border. Driving along by Lac Léman, we could see Caux from afar, but the mountains were hidden in mist.

As soon as we arrived, we met the rest of our team: Claude, French, taking on the show’s administration; and Gunnar and Christian, Swedish technicians. We are rather international for a French show.

We are rather international for a French show.

Tuesday 17 July, 1980

I’ll tell you about the first show. We all had dinner together but were rather subdued (that means normal compared to other people at Caux). We had a meeting first, backstage, said a prayer, then went to our places. The audience flooded in, I let the orchestra out (men in dinner suits, Kathleen in a long dress) and off we went. I made myself calm down and all went fine, point of view audience.

In fact we’d all made mistakes. Mine are rarely visible, but are a question of timing. The audience doesn’t know what is meant to happen, but we all do and especially me.

I only totalled three or four bad cues, and John D, the director, was very pleased. I enjoyed my ‘world première’. Oh, but then….

Marketta had laid out a cold meal, lots of fizzy drinks, and coffee, so we all sat in the kitchen at a long table (flowers and all). Surrounded by pots and pans and huge steel ovens. Michel, on entering, had a standing ovation.

When eventually we’d finished eating, a piano was dragged in (right into the kitchen) and we had a sing-song, and played games (there were 14 of us.) At about 1:30am the party split up, we got the kitchen back to its usual impeccable-ness and went to bed. It was terrific.

Meanwhile, I’m finding out how little I know about faith, and just seeing how long the road is I have to travel. I’m afraid I may start enthusiastic, and get tired soon. I hope that by keeping things in a worldwide perspective I can balance the personal perspective.

I hope that by keeping things in a worldwide perspective I can balance the personal perspective.

This is all terribly easy here at Caux. Back in Paris, back to city life and my friends, it will be all too easy to forget, to lose sight of the goal, to lose a sense of the importance of God’s work. Mountains are inspiring places. Please, can you help me remember? I know God will keep me heading the right way, but I’m so afraid of losing the joy, the freshness, the peace, I have found here.

In the summer of 1983, when the play’s initial tour came to an end, the cast was back in Caux. Su wrote:

Un Soleil en Pleine Nuit has meant a new start in life for me. I’ve given my life to God, and he knows what I need, he knows more about me than I do. He has a plan for the world too, and I want to be part of that. So day by day I’ll go wherever he leads me.

Read the script of Un soleil en pleine nuit

Discover the programme of Un soleil ne pleine nuit

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Watch a video of the play (1985)

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This story is part of our series 75 Years of Stories about individuals who found new direction and inspiration through Caux, one for each year from 1946 to 2021. If you know a story appropriate for this series, please do pass on your ideas by email to John Bond or Yara Zhgeib. If you would like to know more about the early years of Initiatives of Change and the conference centre in Caux please click here and visit the platform For A New World.

• Video Soleil en pleine nuit (Poor man, Rich man), Westminster Productions, 1985: Initiatives of Change
• Photos top, portrait and Su in Paris: Su Riddell
• Photos cast and leaflet: Initiatives of Change

In 1979, a series of summer conferences for families, organized by Dutch parents, began in Caux. Erik Andren and his wife, Sheila, came from the UK to take part. It was the first of many visits.

Erik was a warm-hearted extrovert – an architect, inventor, pilot and poet. He had been born with a congenital heart defect and, at the age of 12, was the 12th and youngest person to receive open heart surgery, at Guy’s Hospital in London. Among his architectural projects were housing in Britain and facilities, including catering kitchens and shops, for airports around the world. He took to computers early, and invented the Margin Maker, the paper feeder for the first Amstrad printers.

On a visit to Caux in the early 1990s, Erik sat up in bed early one morning and filled 13 pages of an A4 notebook with thoughts for a course for aspiring politicians and young professionals in Eastern European, following the collapse of Soviet communism in 1989.

The concept grew, despite scepticism from some about the possibility of delivering it in former communist countries. Launched in 1993 with the input of several colleagues, Erik’s ‘Changing Course’ provided the basis for IofC’s Foundations for Freedom (F4F) training programme. The course highlighted the issues of personal integrity which form the moral and ethical foundations of democracy. It emphasized introspection and the sources of inspiration which lead to effective action.

Despite his own strong Christian beliefs, Erik was aware that those who attended the course might have no religious affiliations. So he focused on the need for participants to spend time in personal ‘R&D’ – research and development, reflection and decision-making – and from this draw their own conclusions.

Operating initially from the UK and then from Ukraine, Foundations for Freedom went on to deliver over 70 courses to more than 1,500 young leaders in 15 central and Eastern European countries as well as South Africa, India, Canada and Australia.

Erik delivered most of the initial courses. As his health and other commitments began to make travel more difficult for him, he ensured that others with similar passion were trained to continue delivery.

I feel the only thing I really want to do is to give to others the chance that I was given to experience a deep change in life and a new purpose.

One participant, a music teacher from Romania, wrote: ‘I didn’t know any more what was right and what was wrong and what I was supposed to do. My main values had become money and survival. I found myself unhappy, stressed and very bitter…. Now I feel the only thing I really want to do is to give to others the chance that I was given to experience a deep change in life and a new purpose.’

Erik wrote that his poems ‘mixed the light-hearted and the serious fairly evenly, as life seems to do, for in laughing I have gained a great deal’. One of them, Not the Bitter Men, dealt with building trust in Northern Ireland. Verses from it were read out in the British parliament. After his death in 2008, Sheila and their children, Lindy and Ross, published an anthology of his poems and prose, Trickledown.

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Watch a video by Olga Shevchuk and Liubou Pranevich on the Foundations for Freedom regional meeting, 2014

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This story is part of our series 75 Years of Stories about individuals who found new direction and inspiration through Caux, one for each year from 1946 to 2021. If you know a story appropriate for this series, please do pass on your ideas by email to John Bond or Yara Zhgeib. If you would like to know more about the early years of Initiatives of Change and the conference centre in Caux please click here and visit the platform For A New World.

• Bookcover: Erik Andren, Trickledown, Kennedy & Boyd, 2019
• Photo spitfire and top: Mike Smith
• Photos Foundations for Freedom: Initiatives of Change
• Video: Olga Shevchuk, Liubou Pranevich for Foundations for Freedom