So I've been silent for a few months. Sorry if you've missed me, but there were reasons to do with a loss of faculties. Anyway, you could have e-mailed to say you love me.
There was a time when I was working in Portugal with a Dutch company. All of our work was in English and my colleagues seemed content to converse with me in my mother tongue. Between themselves, in my presence, they spoke Dutch, so I neglected to tell them that, before returning to England some five years previously, I had lived in their country for about nine years. Quite often they spoke about England and its place in their European Communion, then occasionally about me, always - as you can imagine - in the most glowing terms. Unfortunately, I forgot myself one day and uttered a profanity that described a colleague's genital decay.

Before that happened and my gaff was blown, I was privy one day to a description by a former soldier of a time he spent representing Holland in NATO manoeuvres on Salisbury Plain. He had been particularly amused by the custom among officers and NCOs of the British Army for carrying canes of various sorts, in accordance with their rank or job. An officer might sometimes carry a short rattan cane, Sergeants Major carried pace-sticks to measure marching distances, while drill-instructors (and such) could put on a brave show with their swagger-canes - about two-foot long and black, with a silver-knob on one end, engraved with the regimental crest. I forbore to describe my own observations of the Dutch Army, but found myself recalling how I found a special use for the swagger-cane which I was required to carry whenever about my duties in command of the barracks' night-time guard. This onerous duty once clashed with an already-scheduled rehearsal.
With my Squadron Sergeant Major in panic when another NCO fell sick, he pled with me to fill the breach. Special dispensation was arranged - an ASM hovered near the telephone in case I was required at the guard-room - which is how it was that the play's director wore a soldier's costume for rehearsal once only. Normally, we kept Theatre and Army tightly compartmentalised against each other in all respects.

Naturally, I took off my cap and jacket, but retained my swagger-cane and found myself following the script with it, pointing to where we were at as I made comments to the actors and then using it to help with gestures. It tucked easily under my arm when not in use, in just the same way that it was parked when commanding a body of men at drill on the square.

At the end of the rehearsal, when I gave my notes, the thing really showed its usefulness. Here, I must confess that - over the ensuing years - there have been occasions when it would have been the ideal implement with which to give lazy, recalcitrant or rebellious actors the thorough larruping that they deserved. Indeed, the first adverse entry on my military conduct sheet involved my capture of a National Service lance-corporal's swagger-cane (he had been using it one winter's morn to flick at the frozen curled fingers of shivering recruits), breaking it across my knee and jabbing the jagged end into his chest. But that was the last time I used a swagger-cane in an act of violence. I digress.

As might be expected, we ran a well-disciplined company who rarely interrupted my notes, but when I had finished pontificating and the Stage Manager had said her piece, the floor was open for comments from all other team-members. This was the custom, which sometimes collapsed into disarray when several people wanted to speak simultaneously. The answer was obvious: my swagger-cane was passed to whoever wanted to talk and, as long as he or she held the 'talking stick', that individual held the floor and could not be interrupted until the stick was passed to someone else, eventually back to me to close the rehearsal and return to my guard duties.

That's how the 'talking stick' custom was born and it worked, so I've used it in many subsequent productions and recommended it to apprentice directors when they have had team problems. Alas, these days, it is no longer fashionable for a director to lead by enthusiasm, flair, vision, example, knowledge, talent and drive; all this has been sacrificed on the alter of what they call 'democracy' - political correctness - and the loss shows all too clearly in many finished productions. 

It was to my delight that one of my soldier-actors - now fully trained and making a good living in the USA - reported to me how the 'talking stick' is used in Native American tradition in exactly the same way that he remembered from our rehearsals. He sent me one made by a Sioux friend. Then, it transpired that the same system was used among Australian aborigines and at last I learned that Anglo-Saxon story-tellers ('scops') also employed a 'talking stick' to ensure order.

Please pardon me if I unjustly criticise modern methods. It's just that I have always been so aware of our duty in Amateur Theatre to use people's oh-so-valuable spare time to the uttermost purpose. Time is by far the most expensive commodity in commerce and we get it free. How stupid, therefore, it is to waste it with unnecessary squabbling and talking over each other instead of discussing points rationally.

Always, with my trainee directors, I emphasise how important it is develop a capacity to listen and to watch one's actors as they work, rather than overriding their efforts with talk without thought and observation. Maybe it's just a matter of mutual respect: they can do the play without me, but I cannot do it without them. But I've found that the more I've been willing to listen to them, the more they have listened to me.

Now, if I had kept my big gob shut, instead of cussing in Dutch at my Dutch friend, I would have learned oh-so-many more Dutch secrets. But, we had no tradition of a 'talking stick,' with all of its civilising advantages.

Jonah was a very experience director, teacher and writer who sadly passed away in February 2006. He was also the author of the highly successful "Playmaker - The Craft of Directing Plays (The Way I Seen It)".