As further burnishment on the above pearls of wisdom, I would recount being a member of a proud theatre group, in which a young "director" arrived on our scene and announced his unassailable right to be given control of our next production. Either he was plausible or we were gullible or he spoke seductively to the right people, but he got it and we all pitched in with our support. After a couple of rehearsals under his control, I began to develop doubts and made a few enquiries, but it would have seemed churlish to announce my suspicions and findings; it would have seemed like jealousy. Many floods of tears later, I wished I had been more brutal and self-destructive. It gave me no pleasure to be right.

It is unusual for theatre groups to check the claims of new members.

Therefore, I always advise any new members, who ask me, to keep quiet about their theatrical background and to be patient until people know them better, to take any job that is offered and to do it as well as they can until existing members have developed a faith in their ability and reliability. Who knows, they may even incur the approval of the ruling clique who sometimes feel threatened by real talent.

And yet, I cannot recall attending any performance by an amateur theatre group in which their programme did not include a plea for new members. Even those groups that enjoy a massive membership are keen to attract into membership anyone with a pulse and a bank account. They hope, I suppose, that those who join will become active and compliant members.

So, how are new members treated in your group? Do you have an experienced and friendly "old hand" specially appointed to take care of each and every new member, to listen to reasons for joining, ambitions, conceptions and intentions? Do they expend thought on to whom the new member should be introduced? Do they consider which department could best receive and use them? Or are they expected to introduce themselves and find their own way?

People join any and every sort of organisation because they expect some sort of fulfilment, perhaps even pleasure. They do not join to take part in political infighting, back-stabbing, ego-tripping by a few self-indulgent luvvies or to merely support these pursuits in others. When they are experienced and able theatrepeople, they do not join to be snubbed, ignored and insulted. All too often, however, this is what they experience ... and they simply give up and go away. They have better things to do.

In conversation with leading theatre-group members and in earnest entreaties published in newsletters and magazines, one reads of the concern felt about dwindling memberships. Yet, I cannot recall anyone getting in touch with people who have left, to ask them their reasoning AND TO TAKE THEM SERIOUSLY! More likely, I suggest, the remaining members would seek to defend their own perfect behaviour, the compassion they extended to the useless new member.

Each existing and successful theatre group - whether or not it owns its own theatre - has someone, or some group of earnest lovers of Theatre, in its past - who had a dream, am ambition, a vision of theatrical fulfilment. So they came to agreement with each other and they worked; oh how they worked, and they sacrificed, year in, year out, from one production to the next, highs and lows, successes and failures, financial disasters and artistic triumphs, but with that vision still clear before them. Until, here we are now, with that proud history behind us which is to be fiercely and jealously guarded ... to the exclusion of all others?

Or shall we share it with our Audiences?

And perhaps with the occasional new member?

And maybe, even more occasionally, someone who has had a career elsewhere and may want to join in, in a quiet way, with we likeminded people?

We may own our theatre building, but do we own Theatre?

In much the same way as the church owns God?

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)".