March 28, 2012

Smoking on stage

John Smythe      posted 10 Dec 2008, 10:53 PM

(Responding to comments made on the Chapman Kip Awards forum):

Why should smoking on stage be real when everything else is simulated? Why should it be OK to require actors and audiences (in small spaces) to ingest an addictive poison when we quite sensibly ‘make believe’ with hitting,  shooting, stabbing, poisoning, hanging, strangling … not to mention copulation, urination, defecation …

Put it this way: who believes they have the moral right to ask someone to do something potentially lethal in the pursuit of dramatic credibility when the art of convincing pretence is the very lifeblood of theatre?

sam trubridge    posted 11 Dec 2008, 12:55 PM / edited 11 Dec 2008, 02:52 PM

First of all, you can make cigarettes with leaves other than tobacco. For example, I had a performer make joints out of mint leaves for one show. It smelled so convincingly of marijuana every time that I often had to get reassurance from him that it wasn’t the real thing. And let’s face it, if it is so important to have a cigarette smoked on stage, I can assure you that there is no shortage of performers who smoke enough offstage for it never to become an ethical problem. At least not for now.

Artistically, I am fed up with the idea that theatre is about ‘pretending’. It is not. In theatre you share a real space with real bodies… bodies that are aging in front of us. If something happens on stage then we cannot rewind and experience it again. Theatre is irreversible, irretrievable, and as fleeting as a sunset… or a cigarette for that matter.

The more make-believe and pretend that theatre is, the less it exists in this live world of actions and their consequence. I have seen too many shows where the wine in the glass is just a lump of immovable red resin, or where someone wrecks their kitchen – a kitchen made entirely out of plastic plates and plastic wine glasses. But for anyone who has seen a real live moment of theatre, where an emotional threshold has been forever crossed, or an event shakes our very faith in what we are witnessing, then you will know that theatre is not about mimicry and make believe*.

Cinema does make believe so much better than theatre ever could. The point of difference that theatre will always have is that we share our space with the work, and it doesn’t allow us to sit back in the safety of the auditorium. Don’t get me wrong, I hate cigarette smoke too, but honestly… do you come to the theatre to feel safe? Do you come to the theatre to sit in the darkness squinting into the blinding light of fantasy and fabrication?**

Give me cigarette smoke if that is what it takes for theatre to be a little more real. Extinguishing one cigarette on stage is a rather feeble attempt at propriety and cleanliness when in fact there are much more significant problems to address. As I smell the smoke of the performer on stage I AM offended. But hell, how many of us drive cars and take plane flights? I would say in this day and age these are crimes to nature and the future of humanity that are more significant than smoking one lousy cigarette on stage. Maybe the cigarette has the power to remind us of this? Perhaps the cigarette is a potent symbol of western first world excess that we need to hang onto until we are able to resolve much larger problems.

In the recent performance of ‘Blasted’ at Toi Whakaari I wanted the cigarette smoke to linger, so that the awful catastrophe on stage could continue to assault ALL OF my senses and continue to force me to deal with the cruelties that we inflict on ourselves and othose around us: from the graphic scenes depicted on stage to the trivial domestic act of lighting up a cigarette.

But of course, I forgot, theatre is make-believe, it doesn’t really mean anything, it’s all just entertainment isn’t it?

* Romeo Castellucci’s ‘Tragedia Endogonidia’ would be a good start…

** Plato’s Cave!

John Smythe      posted 11 Dec 2008, 02:52 PM / edited 11 Dec 2008, 02:56 PM

Yes of course, Sam, the performers, performances, design elements and technologies used in theatrical production are real, and so is each emphemeral moment of performance. In most cases they are utilised to manifest a mutually imagined ‘reality’ beyond these physical confines in which we are invited to believe.

Hence ‘make believe’. Hence ‘the willing suspension of disbelief.’

In your Sleep-Wake Seminar did the actors really sleep or simulate it? In Blasted, did the soldier actor really sodomise his colleague, pluck out his eyes and eat them; did people really die … or was it simulated? In King Lear … In Peter Pan … in The American Pilot … Etc …

Certainly the lines get blurred at times; many actions – like moving, eating, drinking, running, jumping, standing still – are actual; the emotions actors manifest in their characters are often indistinguishable from the real thing … Even so, it is role-play within the context of an imagined reality, and where the actor lets go of that small percentage of consciousness that discerns the difference, they, their colleagues and their audiences have got a problem.

Definition of insanity: the inability to distinguish fantasy from reality.

But back to smoking: convincingly smoking real cigarettes on stage does really involve subjecting the actors, those on stage with them and to some extent their audiences in the actual ingesting of what we now know to be addictive poisons. So, as with stage violence and all the other means we use to achieve ‘make believe’, we need to come up with ingenious ways of simulating it safely. 

Oh and by the way, not wanting to be difficult or anything, has anyone ever investigated the health effects of ingesting the smoke from burning leaves other than tobacco? Just asking …

Then there are those smoke machines, so beloved of lighting designers especially: in the old days they were almost certainly toxic and these days I gather they are harmless (aren’t they?) which has got to be good for the casts of long-running musicals who are awash with the stuff night after night … Otherwise debilitated performers will be queuing up behind workers exposed to asbestos and soldiers exposed to Agent Orange …

steve dean          posted 12 Dec 2008, 12:16 PM

>Artistically, I am fed up with the idea that theatre is about ‘pretending’. It is not.

>In theatre you share a real space with real bodies… bodies that are aging in front of us.

Yes, I for one am sick of lily livered productions claiming to be shocking when no members of the audience are even damaged slightly, let alone murdered or maimed.

The cutting edge should be serving up the, errr, ummmm…, cutting edge!

stve

sam trubridge    posted 12 Dec 2008, 05:06 PM / edited 12 Dec 2008, 06:36 PM

The friction between the actual and the virtual in theatre interests me a lot. And I think it is very interesting that the smoking of cigarettes (or not) on stage has provoked this discussion. These days I think we favour the virtual dimensions of the theatre experience more often than we do the material, physical realities of this artform. As I said, film does ‘make believe’ a lot better than theatre ever can.

In episode 4 of his ‘Tragedia Endogonidia’ Romeo Castellucci opens the curtain to reveal an 8-9 month baby on stage. When I saw it in Melbourne the baby laughed. It laughed at this room full of people, it gurgled and pumped its arms and cooed. By being there it ridiculed us for gathering together like this in the darkness to stare: staring at it. The baby’s complete incomprehension of the theatrical arrangement confronted us powerfully. Its naivete contradicted everything that we were there for, and made us reassess our whole reason for being there.

Do you think an actor could have done this? Sure a nice monologue from an older performer playing ‘the baby’s’ perspective could have said as much. However, I believe there is a lot of value in allowing the audience to experience a phenomena and being allowed to interpret it in their own way, rather than reading to them memorized passages of a text that expresses one person’s viewpoint.

I don’t really understand your definition of insanity, since there are so many situations in our modern culture where fantasy is indistinguishable from reality. This is after all the basis of Baudrillard’s whole theorem that we live in a world where the simulacrum has replaced reality, has reshaped reality, and finally concealed the absence of a reality altogether. In fact the baby in the above example illuminates the ‘insanity’ in the conventional theatrical construction of pretending and ‘make believe’. Perhaps the baby was the only sane person in the room that night.

In Sleep/Wake we are working towards having the performer asleep on stage. We managed to achieve this sometimes, but we need to work harder at setting up the right conditions for our performer in future seasons. There were too many other priorities that made this impossible. However, the performer in this role assures me that she will be able to get to sleep in every performance. From there we hope to see what more can be made of this in future manifestations of the work. It is an exciting but challenging aspect of the project.

As for the sodomy in ‘Blasted’, there is a difference between symbolic action and mimesis that interests me. Personally, the pretense at this cruelty bores me a bit on stage, while I am also aware that it would be impossible and inappropriate to do the real thing. This is where symbolic action and metonymic transfer (a la Roland Barthes) becomes interesting.

Take for example Marina Abramovic’s meditation upon ethnic cleansing entitled Balkan Baroque, where she scrubbed a huge pile of beef-bones clean of their flesh. Of course, to perform ethnic cleansing for real would be an absurd way of trying to address/confront the problem. But this action contains a resonance with the event that helps to comment upon the atrocity. It demonstrates the futility in the whole issue of making ‘ethnicity clean’, when underneath our clothes and skin the meat, flesh and bone are all the same colours. The blood of this meat stains Marina’s dress and makes it dirty, defiling her own cleanliness in the process of sanitisation. Do you think it would have worked if she was pretending to scrub the bones? If we had to imagine what she was doing?

It’s not a matter of confusing reality with fantasy (which you suggest is a sign of insanity) rather it is a matter of confronting reality with the ‘mirror’ of live performance: presenting us with a reality that is physically convincing and addresses our physical presence, so we cannot dispense with the issues that we have experienced when the curtain falls and the actors resurrect to take their bows.

Or is theatre just for entertainment? This could be an ‘apples and oranges’ debate after all. Sure, mime smoking in yet another West Side Story if you want to. After all, what difference does it make?

Nic Farra              posted 1 Jan 2009, 12:08 PM / edited 2 Jan 2009, 09:19 PM

This is all intensely interesting. Like Sam, I too have been interested in pushing the boundaries of suspension of disbelief. In the second production of ‘Saving Grace’ produced by WOW! in Dunedin, we assumed that Gerald was in fact the second coming of the Messiah. To imply otherwise as Costa Botes’ film did, would be to deflate the central question: how would the Christ manifest and be perceived in the late 20th Century? So we strove for maximum realism in the slide sequence depicting Gerald’s beaten body (using a lot of make-up) and shooting the pictures in a dissecting lecture theatre at the school of medicine. We devised nails that shot out blood when they were telescoped into Gerald’s wrists as Grace nailed him to the cross.

The aim of this sort of carry-on is, I believe, to assist the audience in suspension of their disbelief so they can experience whatever it is that goes on in their emotions without actively decoding the simulacra in order to do so. I use the ‘Saving Grace’ example because we tried our hardest to make the production values as good as we could get them. In other words, we used our skill as actors, directors and designers to get the best effects we could.

In other words we applied a work ethic to the mise en scene required by the director. Isn’t that what any show should strive to do? If it’s not meeting the mark, then it is simply shoddy work.

‘Just entertainment’ is a loaded term that reveals prejudice. If I go to West Side Story and come away appalled at the inter-racial violence of New York and angry that the idiocy and blind pride of the two warring factions failed to prevent two needless deaths when their flowering love could have pacified a whole neighbourhood and by extension the world, I think I would have been at some other show.

When I’m sitting in the stalls, I want be horrified, delivered from my angst vicariously, exulted, angered, filled with pity and terror… same stuff audiences have wanted for thousands of years.

This is not about cigarettes on stage, bones or rum, sodomy or the lash; it’s about professional standards. As an actor I aim to do my best by the people who pay me: the audience. As an actor, I don’t give a fat rat’s arse what theoreticians say from the comfortable distance of dilletantism. I care more about quality so I can entertain my audience and hold my head up high as a professional.

I remember clearly a forum in my first year at drama school at which a couple of old pros were quizzed by the enthusiastic young students about ‘technique’. “Don’t you feel,” they were asked, “that in a long run you tend to rely on technique rather than giving an honest performance every time?” From the distance of twenty five years I can say that if your technique doesn’t include honesty, you’re kidding yourself. An audience, as Billy Wilder once said, is never wrong.  An individual member of it may be an imbecile, but a thousand imbeciles together in the dark – that is critical genius. In my opinion you try and fool that critical genius at your peril if you want a career as an actor.

Barthes probably speaks very convincingly to those with the education and patience enough to decode his exclusive language. To me he has nothing fresher to say about the nature of illusion vs reality (THE oldest theme in theatre) than The Buddha talking about the nature of samsara.

To sum up, if you do your job well, you are always trying to do better. Rating ‘realism’ over any other style of theatre is just personal taste, it certainly isn’t the definition of ‘cutting edge’. Name your poison. Open up and say ‘ah!’

Dane Giraud       posted 5 Jan 2009, 10:31 AM / edited 6 Jan 2009, 05:32 PM

I feel that people who get up in arms as soon as a cigarette is lit on stage are actually looking for an excuse to disengage from the performance. We all, in these posts, talk about our desire to be carried away when we view theatre but if we were honest with ourselves we would accept that the opposite is true. If a piece of theatre, or even a moment in that piece, is confronting, we want out not in… its this tension that makes good theatre/film so exhilerating.

Theatre has to play to its strengths if it is to survive and immediacy is undoubtedly it’s first and foremost strength. The audience must be acutely aware that the drama can, and may, spill off the stage at anytime… The respect the audience line lets ourselves off the hook from truely pushing ourselves as performers.

Matthew Roderick           posted 29 Jan 2009, 08:57 PM / edited 29 Jan 2009, 08:59 PM

Hmm. very interesting. i came across this forum whilst looking for a simple answer. Can someone in a play,musical or whatever light up a cigarette or cigar and smoke? I am directing a local production of Cabaret at the end of the year and at least two characters light up. I would love to join the rest of the discussion but I feel a little unqualified in my thoughts. All I can think of – as a solid non smoker and someone who opposes smoking and always will- is that art should reflect life. Simple as that. In real life and in the lives of the characters in “Cabaret” smoking was something that was done. Come on it was unusual to find a non smoker! If we can’t have actors doing what the character needs to do, then with political correctness around no one could perform a Tennessee Williams play again in New Zealand and we simply can’t have that! It is not about whether I am Offended as an audience member or “put in danger” It’s a play for Christ’s Sake! how can we tell the story if we don’t have all the words and pictures? Anyway I digress. can anyone help with my predicament? do I have to get a license? Do I have to put it all the advertising? Also might want to note. I do oppose smoking yet played a cigar smoking character in Copacabana in Tauranga in 2003. the last person to smoke on stage in Tauranga that I know of.

John Smythe      posted 29 Jan 2009, 10:53 PM / edited 29 Jan 2009, 10:53 PM

You’re not getting the key point, Matthew.  If you do a play that involves stabbing, shooting, hanging, etc. you are not going to do those things for real are you? You are going to create the illusion. Now because smoking is understood to involve addictive poisons that could be hazardous to the actor playing the smoker, those on stage with them, audience members in close proxinity, people backstage … etc., you also need to create that effect as an illusion. Simple enough?

Dane Giraud       posted 29 Jan 2009, 11:26 PM / edited 30 Jan 2009, 09:14 AM

No, John. Not simple. Smoking a few cigarettes a night cannot be in anyway compared to stabbing someone, or shooting someone… come on! Yes, smoking excessively can lead to illness but in a theatre setting I would feel pretty comfortable that no one, be they actor or audience, was in immediate danger from someone on stage smoking a fag or two. I suppose you would support a ban on fast food on stage for exactly the same reasons?

sam trubridge    posted 30 Jan 2009, 01:31 AM / edited 30 Jan 2009, 09:15 AM

There is a certain hypocrisy and absurdity to some of the anxieties about this concern for health and safety. When doing a show in Italy I decided to have some characters drive into the theatre on a little Vespa/Buggy contraption called an ‘Ape’ (Bee in Italian, pronounced ‘apeh’). During rehearsal someone voiced a concern about the petrol fumes. I find it strange that this came up, since the theatre was high ceiled, well ventilated, and the doors that the vehicle entered through wide open. That people would be upset by a small whiff of petrol (just as much as you get if this vehicle passes you in a busy street) is absurd in light of the amount of poisons people seem content to pump into the environment through the vehicles they drive every day.

Yeah, smoking is hardly like stabbing or hanging someone. But I guess my question to Matthew is – what are you doing to make Cabaret meaningful to us today? Why do THIS story? I think it is great that this show has suddenly become so problematic to you just because of the cigarettes. The issue of what is PC and what is not PC is very interesting today when you think of how the script explores a culture’s slide toward hedonism and Nazism. It is not PC to criticise Israel’s actions (especially in America) for the risk of appearing anti-semitic… when in fact they are sliding towards a fascism of their own. So what is the value of political correctness today? Does it get us any closer to resolving Palestine’s oppression?

I think there is a lot of significance in doing Cabaret today, maybe with the conspicuous lack of cigarettes, because this whole issue of political correctness, and a health and safety culture is becoming more and more fascist. After all, would a real ‘ubermensch’ poison his body with cigarette fumes? Is this not a dirty habit for the weaker lesser races living in places like India, Africa, and South America? I have heard some shocking stories about how big tobacco companies continue to peddle their produce in third world countries…

John Smythe      posted 30 Jan 2009, 09:05 AM

‘Addictive’ is the key word, Dane.

‘A few cigarettes a night’ could well: hook the actor obliged to smoke, leading to their shortening their life and suffering poor health in the lead up to their premature death; reduce their effective income as they prop up amoral/immoral multinational drug cartels (a.k.a. tobacco companies) plus pay all the extra tax that renders to product much more expensive than its true ‘value’ (if any); alienate themselves from a society increasingly unwilling to share their space with people whose clothes and hair stink (try standing in a lift with an office worker who has just been out for a ciggie-break) … etc, etc. 

From the point of view of the actor, what are you going to do if you are offered a prime role that requires you to smoke and don’t, or you did but you’ve given up, or you do but you want to give up? As a director do you have the right to require this of an actor? As a playwright do you have that right?

I saw the film Revolutionary Road the other day, in which both Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio resort to lighting up in almost every scene. My first thought was what an unpleasant shoot is must have been for all concerned, not least the continuity person having to track the state of each fag as each scene progressed (but hey, discomfort comes with the territory in the quest for quality). Then I thought what a lazy device it was and how much more interesting it would have been if they had interacted with a few other props as well that characterised the era. Then I wondered if the tobacco industry had bankrolled the film …

Good theatre is rich in foolish behaviour and long may it be so. The question for practitioners, as always, is where do we draw the line between reality and illusion in the all-important quest for ‘truth’.

Matthew Roderick           posted 30 Jan 2009, 09:20 AM / edited 30 Jan 2009, 09:26 AM

Um John….. Creating the illusion of shooting and stabbing onstage is from my experience far easier than making a unlit cigarette look real. We need it to look, feel, smell, sound,seem real so that we can, as you have reminded us create the suspension of disbelief with an audience so that they can truly connect to the play and the essence of the character and then, “theatre” can be created. To state that we must then, to make people believe that someone has been stabbed or shot or hung actually do it, simply because it has been suggested that smoking needs to be real, is ridiculous.

Now, one could argue that what I am about to say is driven by tobacco companies and probably is…. in film they can make the stabbing, the shooting, the hanging, the decapitation look and seem even “realer” than we can onstage yet they still light a cigarette if they need someone to smoke. hmmmm? Why’s that I wonder? If a character needs to smoke they need to smoke simple as that. if actors don’t want to be in a play where someone smokes then if you feel strongly enough about it “Don’t take that job”

Audiences aren’t going to stop coming to theatre because someone is smoking on stage. they are going to stop if they can’t be moved the same way, if they can’t have that moment of disbelief. The idea of smoking non tobacco cigarettes is the answer to the dilemma is wrong also, It does not, cannot suspend the disbelief of the audience because the smell is wrong the experience is wrong. Also using non tobacco cigarettes doesn’t stop people thinking about smoking does it Theatre happens because we relate to the characters, to the play in our own way and in how that relates to us.

Even if the experiences of the characters are some that the audience won’t even truly experience, being able to imagine that happening and how it would feel is what theatre is all about. Whatever the genre. Anyway I till haven’t an answer to my question.

Michael Wray    posted 30 Jan 2009, 04:56 PM

In film, how do you know they light up a real cigarette as opposed to the non-tobacco variety you mention with reference to stage, given that there is no incorrect smell to interfere with suspension of disbelief?

Dane Giraud       posted 30 Jan 2009, 06:45 PM

John, I think you should write  ‘The tragedy of the actor who was forced to smoke’… you got all the story beats. But the smoking of course has to be metaphoric… the actor simply attempted to be ‘real’ and our ever increasingly protective and frightened society shunned him for his honesty. I like it.

In the words of Jim Morrison ‘No one gets out of here alive…’

Michael Wray    posted 30 Jan 2009, 08:29 PM

[pedant mode on] “No one here gets out alive” [/pedant mode off]

Matthew Roderick           posted 30 Jan 2009, 11:11 PM / edited 31 Jan 2009, 07:00 AM

Given, Michael I don’t know that it is a tobacco cigarette. I was assuming.

John Smythe      posted 31 Jan 2009, 12:00 AM

Er, perhaps you could rewrite that one, Matthew, when you’re really sober.

Matthew Roderick           posted 31 Jan 2009, 07:06 AM

ok that was dumb. I wasn’t drunk then by the way.

Michael Wray    posted 31 Jan 2009, 11:23 AM

Matthew, it was just that you said film makes violent acts look more real than on stage, “yet they still light a cigarette…”  and asked why is that? I couldn’t see how that was part of an argument against non-tobacco cigarettes on stage when for all we know, they are not lighting a “real” (i.e. tobacco) cigarette on screen.

Personally, I am not offended by the use of real cigarettes on stage. I’m not shaken out of my suspension of disbelief by the use of fake or unlit ones either. Of course, I do notice and feel slightly amused by the fake ones. However, and here is a potential irony, when I now see real cigarettes used in stage it also stands out. Again, it does not disturb my suspension of disbelief but I notice and feel slightly amused by something that now seems unusual or rebellious.

We’ve moved beyond the point where real cigarette smoking on stage is seen as normal. This means I am temporarily restored to a conscious, as opposed to in-play, mind-set whether the cigarette used on stage is real or fake. It makes no difference to my ability to suspend disbelief whichever way you go. I wonder whether that has become true now for others too?

John Smythe      posted 31 Jan 2009, 12:05 PM / edited 31 Jan 2009, 12:07 PM

Exactly, Michael. Like actors, audiences naturally maintain a degree of situational awareness while abandoning themselves to theatrical experience. So while I am watching the last scene of Hamlet, for example, the more convincing the killings are, the more that small part of me will consciously want to work out how the illusions were created. If I become over-preoccupied with asking ‘how did they do that?’ rather than ‘how did it come to this?’ the overall value of the exercise is diminished.

This point of balance between subjective involvement in the make-believe and objective awareness of the surrounding reality is also clear to observe in children at play, and children at plays. It’s as natural as breathing; as natural as play-making. 

Our objective preoccupation with how smoking is dealt with will soon diminish as we get used to it.

Dane Giraud       posted 31 Jan 2009, 07:41 PM / edited 31 Jan 2009, 10:19 PM

Yes, that is all good but we’d needn’t have had to have gotten used to it because there was never a problem in the first place…  All the arguments against the smoking of real cigarettes on stage I have read or heard so far are flimsey at best… the actual health risks for both actors and audience (smoking in a performance) have been so blown out of proportion as to be quite paranoid and even delusionary. For me this is another one of those symbolic restrictions; be they right or wrong, causes are fashionable so many people are going to not want to even hint that they condone smoking… 

Matthew Roderick           posted 31 Jan 2009, 10:09 PM

So the answer to my question is not whether I can have people smoking it is whether I need to? Um but if I can make the illusion look real won’t I get in the same amount of “legal” trouble? Does Sally Bowles need to smoke or even pretend to?

Welly Watch       posted 31 Jan 2009, 10:28 PM

It is an objective fact that a singer who smokes has no respect for their instrument. And Dane have you never met a seriously addicted person trying to withdraw?  The fact that generations of people have been conned by advertisers into thinking smoking is cool does not mean this generation can’t wake up to reality and take a different path. Aren’t we trying to do that for the planet, or rather for the survival of our species on the planet? Or do you think that is all paranoid delusion too?

Dane Giraud       posted 1 Feb 2009, 06:27 PM

I used to smoke… in excess of two packets a day. I started when I was 14. It was tough but I quit (3 years ago) though I admit to enjoying a cigar every now and then.

If I was cast in a play or a film tomorrow in which the director wanted me to smoke, would I? Yes. I believe you should serve your art heart and soul.

I actually was asked to smoke for a play not so long ago and I did. The director actually felt a little guilty about asking me to do it but it was in the text. I punctured the cigarette with a needle a few times to limit the flow of smoke into my lungs. It worked well. I have to admit, as a former smoker, I started to really look forward to the scene in which I smoked. It didn’t make me start again though. 

Answering your question at the top of the post John, I think that directors do have the right to ask actors to smoke… they have the right to ask anything of an actor, nudity, anything… The actor also has the right to say no and can step down from the role.

… also, how do the opinions I expressed in regards to this topic put me in the climate change denial camp? Strange…

Barry Lakeman posted 2 Feb 2009, 09:54 AM

It’s boring I know, but I  don’t see the law being mentioned here anywhere, and it might make a difference to some of the debate.  If you need smoking of any kind in your play, talk to a lawyer.  The Smoke-free Environments Act 1990, amended in 2003 and applied from 10 December 2004, made internal workplaces (with some exceptions) 100 percent smokefree. THE AREAS AND THE PEOPLE COVERED:  It applies to theatres, film, and television workplaces, stages, film and television sets.  A ‘workplace’ is an ‘internal area’ frequented by employees or volunteers, and includes private homes, hotel or motel rooms, community / church halls, marae etc. if used as a workplace for theatre, film or television.

A work-related area not covered by the Act is outdoor areas (e.g., film, television or theatre work conducted outdoors, or on decks or verandahs), but not school grounds.

The ban applies to volunteers and independent contractors.  [And the law applies equally to amateur and professional theatre, short films or Wellywood majors.]

FAKE CIGARETTES:  The smoking ban applies to herbal cigarettes.  [It talks about smoking “vegetable matter”.]  The use of imitation cigarettes is allowed under the Act provided they are imitation cigarettes which cannot be lit and do not contain tobacco product, weed or plant.  [So you can smoke imitation cigarettes on stage, provided you can’t smoke the imitation cigarettes.]

FINES:  If an employer fails to take ‘all reasonably practicable steps’ to ensure that no one smokes they may be fined up to $400 (individual) or $4,000 (body corporate).  Where theatres, film or television premises are available for hire to outside organisations, the owner of the premises AND the hirer may be liable to a fine.

So, in summary, until someone comes up with cigarettes made of say, possum hair or some compound of phosphorous, there are some plays that you just can’t do if smoking is integral to the plot, unless you have a large contingency fund for the fines.  But as the ban applies to commercials where people smoke in cars and in the lounge while their kids are around, I doubt that any action would be taken.

John Smythe      posted 2 Feb 2009, 10:07 AM

Thanks Barry – that is very valuable not to mention focusing.

Jonny Hair           posted 2 Feb 2009, 10:43 AM / edited 2 Feb 2009, 10:48 AM

I think the current law is ridiculous and brings in to question freedom of expression in our country. I agree with previous comments in so far that, if asked to play a character that I knew smoked, I feel it is part of the character and it is up to me if I accept to play the role or not. Any discussion and agreement about fulfilling the smoking on stage, whether it is real cigarettes or rolled herbs or any other alternative should be made with the producers and director prior to rehearsals. I personally feel that if I’m watching a play and one of the characters smoke, I want to watch them smoke. No matter what they are smoking, I feel that the outcome of the act is not so severe that it cannot either be done or cheated/manufactured in such a way that would not be harmful to the actor or the audience. Even considering miming cigarette smoking, or not lighting the cigarette or any other ridiculous notions of how you can play the action look terrible and stand out, unless it has been used as a convention for other props. (and even then if its not apt or justified hmmm…) I wanted to stay out of this discussion but I feel that the current state of the law is very questionable and destructive of art in general. I feel it should be up to the production team and actor to figure out how they are happy to play the action.

Dane Giraud       posted 2 Feb 2009, 01:19 PM

Yes, John, very focusing. If there was ever any doubts that our legislators were anti-artistic expression they should now be put to rest. In their defense I guess you would have to understand what art actually is to be anti it, as you would have to understand what art is to know such laws are plain wrong.

No one could prevent me lighting a cigarette on my film set.  What gives them the moral right?

It could be time to challange this law actually. As to the unique character of film sets and theatres they should enjoy a special exemption.

Matthew Roderick           posted 2 Feb 2009, 04:27 PM

thank you Barry for answering my question. the law is ridiculous and oppressing expression . I’m with Jonny, if I was asked to smoke and it was part of the character I would do and have.

John Smythe      posted 2 Feb 2009, 05:22 PM

To play devil’s advocate (again), aren’t you missing the logic of this? It’s not just about you. It is a basic tenet of civilised society that one person’s freedom may not be gained at the expense of another’s.

In no workspace or public space – or even in private, come to that – does anyone have the right to wilfully endanger the health or wellbeing of others. While artists are free to challenge, confront, satirise, etc, using a wide range of creative devices in the process, they have no special right to actually endanger others, be they colleagues, customers or passer by.

Now smoking is classified as dangerous (causing cancer and heart-disease, both to smokers and those exposed to second-hand smoke) and while it is not illegal, those who indulge in it may not do so in enclosed spaces where others who do not choose to smoke may be affected. So it goes way beyond one actor choosing to smoke in the name of artistic integrity.

Perhaps the way around it is to ensure that everyone else – co-workers, contractors, volunteers, audience members – who may also be affected by someone smoking is warned as soon as practicable and is able to opt out without penalty, while those who choose to remain sign some kind of indemnity that certifies they have made an informed choice ….

Even so, if it’s dangerous it’s dangerous and what gives anyone the right to endanger others, whether they have permission or not? And how can we expect those we entrust with managing our collective responsibilities to ignore the scientific evidence and let us harm each other?

Barry Lakeman posted 2 Feb 2009, 09:06 PM / edited 2 Feb 2009, 09:15 PM

 I have been a smoker for 42 years (!), so smoking on stage is not an issue for me,  personally –  though I don’t like the smell of the real thing on stage.

I would like to find a way that smoking can appear to be happening (as one can simulate strangulation and so on),  but at the moment it doesn’t seem to be possible.    While there have been a number of producers/production companies that have thought that it is worth the risk, there are also some who will not.

The law as it is written makes it very difficult to do plays like, for example, Stephen Sinclair’s “The Bach”, J B Priestley’s “When We Are Married”, and Anthony McCarten’s “Weed”, or to represent any situation where smoking would further define a character or a period atmosphere (such as “The Dambusters”)..The problem, for me, is that there is no way to legally simulate someone inhaling and expelling “smoke”, as there is no legal way to generate it.  (I have hidden an incense stick in my hand alongside a prop “joint” and just burned the incense – but you can’t get away with that in every situation.)

It is ironic that you can assault an audience with strobe lights, foul language, shouted voices and simulated sex, throw blown up condoms at them, and even spew “penguin vomit” on their shoes, without, as far as I know,. being required under law to tell them in advance,  But you can’t smoke vegetable matter – even the most inoffensive and innocuous stuff – in their presence.

I suggest that we don’t make too much fuss about this.  “‘Nanny” might curtail those other activities, too.  We might end up with some functionary having the powers that the Lord Chamberlain’s Office had in the UK until 1968.  In the current PC environment I think there iis a better chance that Alpha Centauri will spin out of orbit and smash onto the earth than there is a chance that the Smokefree Act will be relaxed.

If we turn to the way the law is observed:  As the making of the “Smokefree” advertisements don’t comply with the law, it is obviously being ignored, and the likelihood of prosecution is very slight.  Presumably the co-operative that staged “The Bach” at Circa so soon after the amendment was passed into law, and the Circa Company themselves, were prepared to take the risk. But there are some production companies that are nervous about it, and prohibit it in productions in which they are involved.

Dean Hewison   posted 2 Feb 2009, 10:57 PM

Maybe those ads are CGI, like Benjamin Button and Yoda.

Jonny Hair           posted 3 Feb 2009, 10:33 PM

Theatre reflects life John. Your views on smoking in theatre makes me scared to go outside. Quite often, as a non-smoker, I do get irritated at stray smoke drifting on the wind into my face, but it happens. I do object to smoke however being BLOWN in my general direction, however this happens too, either un-intentionally or sometimes intentionally. I think as long as people are advised that there is smoking in the show they can either choose a row further back or not go if its such a big deal to them. What about the effects of dry ice and hazers? Surely they are just as bad as smoking. I read somewhere that the short term effects of Dry Ice (Pure CO2) are: dizzyness, fatigue and light-headedness. Whereas the long term effects are; brain damage and death.

Matthew Roderick           posted 3 Feb 2009, 11:09 PM

Exactly – theatre and art reflect life. people smoke in real life. People living in the thirties smoked there fore if the character smokes so should the actor.

paul stephanus posted 4 Feb 2009, 10:46 AM / edited 5 Feb 2009, 07:47 AM

When actors are willing to freeze in cold seas /

and then paddle for hours kneeling on their poor knees, /

they should be rewarded with a comforting puff: /

And if the audience breathes it, well, that’s just tough. /

John Smythe      posted 4 Feb 2009, 07:14 PM

Your argument fails in more than one way /

Since smoking’s not scripted into the play. /

Reward for suffering’s no better bet: /

The actor who does it never gets wet!

As for ‘theatre reflects real life’ /

You’ve cut to the quick, as sharp as a knife /

But what’s in the mirror’s not the real biz /

‘S illusion and hey, that’s what theatre is!

[See the Frogs Under the Waterfront review that sparked this battle of stanzas.]

sam trubridge    posted 4 Feb 2009, 07:32 PM

(stanzaless)

Your assumption is, John, that it is only up to the playwright what goes on stage or stays off… as if anyone who follows are beholden to the printed word. What if the directorial concept called for smoking? – or the design? – or the actor’s characterisation? Smoking could be just as relevant (or irrelevant) in ‘The Frogs’ as in ‘Cabaret’.

Mirrors and illusions are very different things. Artaud’s theories likened theatre to a mirror – a cruel site of rigorous self-inspection… but an illusion is substanceless, and spectral… purporting to be something that it is not. The mirror is not so… it shows us who we are, sometimes when we would rather not see who we are. I don’t go to the theatre for illusions, I go for some kind of encounter.

I think if I had a show with smoking in it then I would instruct my performers not to inhale the smoke into their lungs.

Would work in a Bill Clinton biodrama.

John Smythe      posted 4 Feb 2009, 08:15 PM / edited 4 Feb 2009, 08:28 PM

Yes we must reflect truth, as young Hamlet showed /

(And he said that long before your Artaud) /

But no matter how close we may get to the glass /

No smoke will flow into our nostrils or marths.

Dane Giraud       posted 4 Feb 2009, 10:42 PM

I think it is too reductive to state theatre is illusion. As Carl Jung stated in his commentary on the biblical book of Job ‘there is a strange supposition that something can only be true if it presents itself as a physical fact… Physical is not the only criterion of truth…’

If we are to call theatre representitive (or to put it even more crudely – pretend) it should be no surprise that standards currently are not what they could be. All an actor has to strive for is the creation of a convincing shell (an many don’t even achieve that). This is why people today can ban cigarettes from theatres. They believe the actor has no business being real.

Matthew Roderick           posted 4 Feb 2009, 10:52 PM

Dare I quote ” You want the truth! You can’t handle the truth!”

paul stephanus posted 4 Feb 2009, 10:54 PM / edited 5 Feb 2009, 07:34 AM

What’s on stage is an illusion, we know that much is true /

But we hate it when the veil is torn, don’t you? /

So if Xanthias were to light up a toy cigarette, /

with no smell, or texture, or smoke on his breath, /

the world we’ve all worked so hard to create /

would fail to convince and disintegrate. /

Matthew Roderick           posted 5 Feb 2009, 12:11 AM

Exactly

John Smythe      posted 5 Feb 2009, 07:48 AM

How strange that in this comic case you want reality /

When frogs abound in wetsuits, singing, chattering with glee /

When a leather slapstick simulates the hard resounding whack /

Because you know how wrong it is to really, truly smack.

Richard Grevers                posted 5 Feb 2009, 01:53 PM / edited 5 Feb 2009, 02:29 PM

In reply to Johnny: Apples and Oranges. Combustion of organic matter usually produces a range of carcinogens. Also, inhaling any amount of smoke (whether from first-hand or second-hand cigarette, driving past a farmer’s burnoff, or burning your toast) temporarily impairs your lung function to a degree which varies from person to person. The duration of the impairment also varies but it exceeds the actual exposure time.

In good conditions, we operate with a 4:1 overcapacity With tabacco, there is the additional factor of an addictive drug. I certainly wouldn’t use any old dried leaves, as all sorts of unknown chemicals could result. We used to use commercially available clove cigarettes if a performer did not wish to smoke tobacco.

Disregarding the law for a moment, the size and nature of the venue is a major factor. In a small space, possibly inadequately ventilated, even a single cigarette can become quite overpowering. In sky city theatre (with its positive pressure fire control system) not one smidgeon of smoke from the stage should reach the audience.

With Dry Ice, the visible component is actually water vapour. The danger comes from CO2, and is a matter of concentration. We breathe in CO2 with every breath we take. It is usually at a concentration of around 1% – 1.5%. 3% makes you drowsy and above 4% leads to unconsciousness and potentially death. Cold CO2 is heavier than air (which is why we use it) and therefore pools in the lowest place it can find. In theatres the danger spots are orchestra pits and trap rooms etc. beneath stage. If using dry ice with an occupied pit, you should borrow or hire a CO2 monitor alarm from the company providing your dry ice, and place it at a vulnerable point.

Modern smoke machines emit a cloud of ultrafine liquid particles. The substance varies (there are fast-dissipating and lingering smoke formulas) but all have to comply with EU or US regulations as safe to inhale (they still seem to cause irritation for a small number of people). There are no smoke particles, unless the machine is badly maintained and something else gets into the heater unit.

So, dry ice, smoke machines and hazers, while they can have their own distinct hazards, are not on a par with smoke. As to the law, I believe the Government has every right to make the rules, after all, they foot the bill for the consequences. If you want personal freedom, the price might have to be a fully user-pays health system.

Jonny Hair           posted 6 Feb 2009, 03:33 PM / edited 6 Feb 2009, 04:39 PM

Yeah, that comment about C02 e.t.c was more for effect than anything else, I know it was a bit O.T.T. I agree with most of your points.

The only thing I disagree with is the part of the law stating where we can’t smoke vegetable matter on stage anymore. As you bring up, you used to use commercially available clove cigarettes and I am sure there are other harmless options. Great! But legally can we use them now? No. Why not???

If I was writing the law I would just have a stipulation that if a show does have smoking (of any kind) that the audience should be made aware of it before entry. That would give patrons who do have a problem with it, a chance to choose their row accordingly or choose not to come.

Obviously no production wants the audience to feel that their health is at risk. What we do want though is the chance for the audience, and ourselves, to take risks. With every possible production; apples, oranges and vegetable matter if need be.

Dane Giraud       posted 6 Feb 2009, 09:34 PM

The reason I would imagine Johnny is because the law makers don’t even want people pretending to smoke on stage. They are of the same repulsive type that in America recently wanted to erase President Roosevelts cigarettes from all his portraits because of the ‘negative impact it could have on the young’…

As I said the impact on health is low, and many good points have been made about sizes of theatres etc. all which could have found their way into the body of the legislation, but logic, as has been proved so many times in our recent history, has little to do with it. Thank G-d we’ve seen the end of that mob for a while…    As for the list of plays that we can no longer perform… What happens when the powers that be say ‘enoughs enough… the play Othello portrays a negative stereotype. It is no longer able to be performed…  Do you think that day could never come? Any laws like these mean the slow rotting of personal freedoms.

Health smealth! Some things, believe it or not, are more important.

Michael Smythe                posted 7 Feb 2009, 03:39 PM / edited 7 Feb 2009, 03:40 PM

Two points I would like to toss in to this excellent debate:

1) Do producers who engage in this generic product placement (no specific brand required as a couple of companies own them all) receive a kickback from the tobacco industry or are they generous /stupid enough to deliver the commercial benefit for free?

2) Would the ‘personal freedom’ fighters be happy if the law required them to warn audiences in advance that they will be exposed to passive smoking? Then the punters could make their choice and good old market forces could be left to motivate innovative solutions.

John Smythe      posted 7 Feb 2009, 04:39 PM

Good points, bro. I have often wondered if producers whose dramas feature chain-smokers are accepting back-handers from Philip Morris, British American Tobacco, et al. Somehow I find this easier to credit than that actors, who so often like to be seen as the conscience of society, are so mindlessly willing to pay all those extra taxes and prop up immoral multinational drug cartels while abusing the most important asset they own: their bodies.

But regarding you ‘market forces’ scenario, as I read it the audience is less important, legally, than workers and co-workers; employees and volunteers. The point has been made that actors and crew are free to accept a job or not where first or second-hand smoking is in the equation, but this presupposes that such supposedly ‘creative’ decisions will be made in advance of their signing up.

And even so … Perhaps Actors Equity has a position on the notion of their members potentially losing work because they are unwilling to expose themselves to such risk. I don’t think employees and volunteers can indemnify organizations against any other sort of danger … can they?

Welly Watch       posted 7 Feb 2009, 05:37 PM

Do A-list actors who smoke on screen get an extra fee too? Celebrity endorsement advertising is big bucks. Oh bugger, already I sense the noses of impecunious actors twitching at the prospect …

Dane Giraud       posted 7 Feb 2009, 11:03 PM / edited 8 Feb 2009, 07:33 AM

Michael, that is exactly what most of us are saying… let the audience choose whether they want to go or not. That’s a mature answer to the problem. The artists’ vision isn’t compromised and niether will the audience members health. 

John, I am interested by your comment that actors like to be seen as the conscience of society. Actors aren’t school teachers! Do you imply that we have more to learn from an actors correct politics than from their serving the text of a master playwright?    As soon as an actor assumes this role of societys conscience they are no use to anyone. They become a propogandist for their own personal agendas, not the truth as embodied by theatre and perfomance. Have you ever wondered why so many of our playwrights have Spike-Lee-itus?  

Theatre is holy but isn’t holier than thou.

Michael Smythe                posted 7 Feb 2009, 11:09 PM / edited 8 Feb 2009, 04:03 PM

Yebbit it must be an informed choice. We should be warned –

a) so we can protect our health

b) so we can avoid aiding and abetting commercial promotion

c) so we can decline the opportunity to witness yet more resorting to tired old theatrical cliches

John Smythe      posted 8 Feb 2009, 08:05 AM / edited 16 Feb 2009, 09:54 AM

Oh dear Dane … I simply meant that actors play their roles in a process called theatre which some have likened to the conscience of society. Many actors like to think their profession serves a greater purpose than showing off and personal aggrandisement. I am not talking about actors who use their own public profile to participate in politics or whatever …

The notion of conscience does not imply teaching to me at all. It is our sense of right and wrong, good and bad … the values we live by. And these are up for scrutiny / debate / consideration / challenge, or simply there as part of the fabric, in every story told in any medium, from a joke to an epic.  

As for ‘Holy theatre’ – God help us all from that.  

Jonny Hair           posted 8 Feb 2009, 05:19 PM

No one wants to support the tobacco industry. It is absolutely corrupt and evil but that shouldn’t stop us doing theatre pieces that have smoking in them. I can’t ever recall a character having a packet of cigarettes, only the fact that they smoked. If I’m inspecting the brand of cigarette a character smokes rather than the action of the play, then I think the play is missing its mark anyway. The health risks of actual smoking is still being debated in this discussion, but I think it’s been obvious from previous comments that there ARE alternatives (that don’t look naff) to smoking an actual cigarette on stage. Hence no health risk for anyone.

Susannah Donovan          posted 13 Feb 2009, 10:47 AM

It only takes a few cigarettes for someone to form an addiction, and if any actor is required to smoke in a performance night, after night, after night, then they may form a lethal habit just for the sake of a two-week run. Is any performance worth that?

When an audience watches a show they are buying into the fact that the performance is not real, that it is make-believe no matter how real it looks, the same as with film. If you want to make it real, then why don’t you legally change your name to that of the character you are playing, and have a real relationship with the actor who plays your husband. Sleeeping for real onstage is ridiculous.  Actors must always maintain a degree of control, no matter how into the moment they are. Can you say you have self-control while you are asleep.

The very nature of theatre is artifice. If you want it to be real then why stage theatre at all. Why not go to Farmer’s Crescent in Lower Hutt and watch real violence and then discuss afterwards what lesson that teaches society.  Why don’t you sit at a bus stop and watch the theatre in the street. That’s all totally real.

sam trubridge    posted 14 Feb 2009, 01:02 AM / edited 14 Feb 2009, 09:36 AM

That’s a very simplistic view of theatre Susannah, actually a very simplistic view of most artforms. Yours is an attitude that seems oblivious to most of the innovations in theatre and fine arts over the last 50 years, or 100 years.

Look at the first time Picasso used collage in one of his paintings, the works of Marcel Duchamp, Rauschenberg, Abramovic, Damien Hirst. There are equivalent revolutions in theatre based around the idea of framing reality, and playing with what is real. Maybe it’s easier to sustain an old-fashioned attitude to theatre because of the fact that (unlike painting, sculpture etc) the ‘artefact’ of theatre is lost in the instant that it is performed.

In order to preserve theatrical antiquity we have to restage it in conventional ways to stop significant from sliding into obscurity. This is okay in big cities like London and New York, where museum theatres play an important part in the theatrical ecology, but in small cities like Wellington the preoccupation with preserving history (or historical modes) can use up the majority of resources and spaces if we are not careful.

But I agree with your attitude on actors smoking on stage insofar as I think that it is possible to find creative solutions to the problem without using those stupid fake cigarettes with the glowing LED tip.

Dane Giraud       posted 15 Feb 2009, 07:38 AM

Sam, I don’t think people are preserving history so much as preserving ‘quality’ in these museum productions. In a dated Shakespearen production you are invariably going to get better actors with better voices, movement, text interpretation skills, and, from the directors, real thought and, put plainly, taste.     Susannah, your debate is not a practical one. We wouldn’t change our name because that would have no impact on an audience, where the smell of cigarette smoke would, be it a positive or a negative. As for a stage husband sleeping with his on-stage wife… Well… Say, no more really.    My most practical philosophy when it comes to performance is why fake something that you can just do? One of the first plays I ever did involved an on-stage fight, and the actor I worked with would get off on cracking me one occasionally. I talked to him about it but he laughed it off, so I cracked him back… By closing night the fight involved some of the set! I got to say, I needed to be puffed and emotional after the fight (as per the text) and I always was!      The only thing theatre has over any of the other art forms is the rare danger that the action could spill off the stage. That’s it. That’s all. Yet we throw the audience into pitch blackness and blast the stage with lights, for no other reason but to devide the performers from the audience.  Then the poor actors spend the rest of the performance striving to connect with the audience again. It’s mad!    Smoke, spit, fight.. get through! If they hate you for it that is not always a bad thing.   Sam. Some thoughful chops on theatre. But what was that earlier comment on Israel about?!

sam trubridge    posted 15 Feb 2009, 10:00 AM / edited 15 Feb 2009, 10:13 AM

About the ‘Israel’ comment: I was responding to Matthew’s questions about staging ‘Cabaret’ mainly, and trying to think through some way of addressing the issue of smoking on stage in relation to the themes of the play. Fascism is an insidious thing. It starts with prejudices and small forms of suppression which snowball. Nazism, as one example, was very well marketted.

Later (and wiser?) we say ‘never again’, and yet the most famous victims of Nazism have for several decades been occupying a country and suppressing a race with horrific privations and violence. The occupation of Palestine is also very well marketted. On air, Israel continues to ‘play the victim’ to Hamas terrorism. However, the superior Israel army (equipped by the US) consistently levels many more residencies and civilians than Hamas, imprisons innocents, and obstructs Palestine business and trade; all on top of the continued occupation and oppression of Palestine the suffering that goes with that.

My question (and it is an interesting question for someone staging ‘Cabaret’) is where does this begin? What gives us the notion that we can treat someone else so inhumanely.

Returning to the question about smoking in ‘Cabaret’, I wonder if there could be some significant impact in having a conspicuous lack of cigarettes and cigarette smoke in the performance? Today’s Fascism is the host of laws invented ‘for our own health, security and safety’ which (whilst rooted in some tangible need) often reach a point of absurdity. The lack of smoking in this situation could be stronger than its presence.

I would be very interested in seeing a ‘Cabaret’ that asked the question ‘what is Fascism now’? I am well familiar with what it WAS. But today the world is a different place. Victims have become perpetrators, cigarettes are now unhealthy, and yet we are still likely to be labelled Fascists if we try to prevent people from smoking, or if we try to intervene in Palestine. It is a very challenging and complicated topic, but within it I think there is something very necessary, very essential to the immediacy of the theatrical medium, and a much richer way of addressing ‘Cabaret’ than a faithful re-staging of it.

John Smythe      posted 15 Feb 2009, 11:11 AM / edited 15 Feb 2009, 01:21 PM

The most useful summation of fascism that I know of is ‘treating people as objects’. In relation to this topic, no-one does that more than cigarette companies. And downstream from them: their marketing gurus, vendors and, yes, the inconsiderate smokers.

May I also endorse Susannah Donovan’s views. Theatre is artifice, no matter how much it gives us access and insights to the ‘truth’ and ‘reality’; no matter how physically close it gets its the audience.

The most valuable resource theatre has to work with is the audience’s imaginations and capacity for empathy; their intellectual and emotional intelligence; their humanity. It is these qualities that inspire us to suspend our disbelief. We don’t need to smell something to imagine it. And often sitting in the dark allows us to engage more effectively with the works of art being created before us.

Dane Giraud       posted 15 Feb 2009, 11:59 AM

I understand where you are coming from John, in theatre being artifice, but how much more so than life? Is not society just a series of rituals and symbols, some of great worth, some utterly pointless. People, in real life, often find themselves punished for their honesty and society often pertepuates lies either through denial or mis-information. Is life that more phony than theatre?

Sam, I think your views on Israel betray your intelligence. You fail to even acknowledge, in your discussion on fascism, that Israels enemies are xenophobic Islamic theocrats (one would imagine Hamas would be anathema to the left, but strangly, the two are cosy at the moment). How fasicst does it get! But, I would assume, that you consider your views truth. As I do mine. If the truth is so slippery, how can we say life is more real than theatre?

Michael Smythe                posted 15 Feb 2009, 12:58 PM

I suppose it is necessary to state the obvious: artifice is not a synonym for phony.

Dane Giraud       posted 15 Feb 2009, 09:17 PM

Actually you are wrong there, Michael. Check a dictionary…

Julian Speargrass              posted 16 Feb 2009, 07:45 AM / edited 16 Feb 2009, 08:04 AM

I’ve just caught up with this thread, and have to say: I just saw a show in the Wellington Fringe, FAUST CHROMA, that really intelligently weaves in and out of this topic. It’s a beautifully theatrical show, really uses everything, and is quite eloquent about how theatrical artifice can perhaps make a person more alive than they are in so-called real life.

Really awesome show.

I saw their last night in Wellington, but I know they’re headed to Palmerston North next week. Don’t know the details…

Did anyone else see this show, or know much about the company?

I see a review from John Smythe. Have you seen other shows of theirs, or are they new?

What it got me thinking about was the way we’re all pressured to play certain ‘roles’ in real life. When I’m teaching, I’m definitely performing in a very specific and limited way. And while I find that performance from within myself – that is, I don’t think of it as not being me – it’s certainly not a complete, or unfiltered, or authentic me. That ‘authentic’ me maybe never gets to come out in real life. I’d like to think that it does, or can, in quiet moments with just me and my wife (for instance). But I know that even we (maybe especially we) play roles for each other, hide or repress certain parts of ourselves, and so on.

I found myself really envying these actors, who, in my imagination, could really be their ‘real’ selves around each other, through the process of making this show and wanting to share that experience with an audience. The play was written by some German guy, but I’m absolutely convinced their were a few moments when the actors were just talking directly to the audience in their own words, about their own experience….

Gyorgy Adam     posted 16 Feb 2009, 07:46 AM / edited 16 Feb 2009, 07:47 AM

I do not think that you are correct, Dane.  What Michael says seems to work very well with this ‘dictionary’ you guide us to:

ar·ti·fice  (ärt-fs)

n.

1. An artful or crafty expedient; a stratagem. See Synonyms at wile.

2. Subtle but base deception; trickery.

3. Cleverness or skill; ingenuity.

[French, from Old French, craftsmanship, from Latin artificium, from artifex, artific-, craftsman : ars, art-, art; see art1 + -fex, maker; see dh- in Indo-European roots.]

‘Wile’, ‘craft’, ‘ingenuity’, alongside the idea of ‘deception’; the possible connection between ‘making’ and ‘craft’ (actual object, skill, bringing something into being) and deceptiveness – seems a lot more complicated than, how do you say, the straw man you are talking of?

Michael Smythe                posted 16 Feb 2009, 09:26 AM / edited 16 Feb 2009, 10:26 AM

phoney adj. & n. (also phony) colloq. – adj. (phonier, phoniest) 1 sham; counterfeit. 2 fictitious; fraudulent. …

While the meanings of artifice and phony overlap they are not synonyms. If the not so subtle differences did not exist – one can be positive, the other is always pejorative – we would not need different words.

Dane Giraud       posted 16 Feb 2009, 11:32 AM / edited 16 Feb 2009, 08:42 PM

John, no, we don’t need to smell something to imagine it, but in the context of certain material, the smelling may be of paramount importance to the theatrical experience. We don’t need to use puppets! Lights, even actors! We don’t need to use anything apart from what we choose to use and it is the choice that defines us as artists surely. Take choices away and it follows that someones vision has been thwarted. So the choice I feel, becomes such: artistic vision vs. vogue ideology. I will always choose vision over politics. 

Julian, yes, we do play roles in society. This does not change the fact that theatre is artifice but, for me, it points out the fact that there are at least two forms of truth, psychical and psychic. People choose which truth is more useful for them. I think a balance is important.

sam trubridge    posted 16 Feb 2009, 07:47 PM

For me theatre is about the play between the real and the imaginary, the material and the virtual. If there is too much artifice then it becomes phony, decorative, and inconsequential. It is the materiality of the theatrical experience that distinguishes it from other artforms… if this aspect is not being addressed by the creators of the work, then I’d rather watch a film.

Gyorgy Adam     posted 17 Feb 2009, 12:03 PM / edited 17 Feb 2009, 12:36 PM

Sam, I am certainly in agreement with you that the theatre that I want is about play between these categories.  It is rather surprising that you chide others so cruelly, and call their views ‘simplistic’ when they write what seems to me to be a rather deliberately overstated polemic, to which I would think you would be sensitive when you are being polemic yourself.  I hope that you will receive my contribution more generously, as that is the spirit in which I am trying to offer it.  Forgive me if I fumble.

Materiality (in its many levels) is so key for me, too.  The wonderful shapes and objects that can be made in the performance space!  Seeing a huge tree stump ,with actors swinging wildly from it!  Delight!  But what if there is a misunderstanding and an overbalance, also, in this direction?  I must point out that I am not interested in the strange attempt at an ideological debate, apparently over ‘fascism’, that seems to be unfolding.  It seems a rather disproportionate analogy for the issue at stake, and more than a little insulting for those who suffered through horrors in those situations, including one of my relatives.    How do you say, Godwin’s law?

In any case, for me I think I agree with you, really, but I want to talk of that other part, the other part you are not talking about.  If the material replaces the imaginative,  the elements of staging are an accumulation of material junk, it is a poor moment of lazy mimesis.  That, Sam, I would think that you would agree with me, is also phony.  If artists cannot possibly think of any other way of creating an atmosphere than to read a bad book on what they think is naturalistic acting, and let their actors walk around smoking a cigarette and jamming their hands into their pockets and looking moody, because that is apparently ‘character’, and this is all they can think of in their art, then I would rather watch the film along with you.  These people are ignoring that when my friend Chekhov first wrote, as you know, we looked at the ‘real object’ on stage extremely differently, and that my friend Stanislavsky debated vigorously but found much common ground with his friends Meyerhold, Michael Chekhov, Vakhtangov.  

The artist who cannot create, who cannot see how materiality is manipulated?  Who cannot see that ‘real life’ is also always performative?  There is no art to these people’s artifice, and nothing that matters in their materiality.  They are not interrogating the real, the imaginary, or the fact that the two are always-already entangled (as I am sure you would agree with me).  They are simply accumulating.  They do not see that the material can also be a point of access for the imaginative.  They do not see the magic of the real objects on stage in the works of Beckett.  They do not see the way in which Castellucci’s objects _function_.  They are not artists.

sam trubridge    posted 17 Feb 2009, 10:12 PM

Bravo! It is easy to confuse the craft of making theatre with artistry, much in the same way that one can become convinced they are an artist if they can draw a convincing portrait of someone. My interest in ‘the fascist debate’ was in finding a way that a contemporary performance of ‘Cabaret’ may operate with relevance to a ‘here and now’ (a form of materiality if you will), possibly by somehow posing the question ‘what is fascism today?’

Aaron Alexander              posted 21 Feb 2009, 08:55 PM / edited 21 Feb 2009, 11:37 PM

Great debate.

Here’s my thoughts.

The Smoke Free Workplaces legislation was conceived with entirely different forms of workplace than a theatre in mind. Offices, factories, workshops and hospitality venues are where the vast majority of NZers work, and as such are rightfully the law’s focus.

There is a massive and obvious difference between working 8/10 hours a day in an environment where many people smoke many cigarettes, and working 2 hours a day in an environment where very few people smoke very few cigarettes. No one would argue that the two sets of conditions resemble each other scientifically, which, if this is a health issue, is the foundation of the need for regulation.

To argue that the law exists, even in part, to protect actors and audiences from the health risks of an actor smoking on stage is practically an insult to the intelligence. I suspect the average Wellington punter breathes in more toxic chemicals walking from the car to the theatre door than sitting in the theatre while an actor puffs on a fag. The banning of onstage smoking is at best a side-effect of the law.

If it was even thought about for more than a few moments when the law was drafted, I imagine the cost, (in scientific research, legal and parlimentary time) of creating a seperate section for the dozen or so theatre ‘workplaces’ and their few hundred (??) semi-regular employees was not considered good use of taxpayer’s funds.

However, in allowing the theatre to fall under the blanket of this legislation, the government has in effect censored the theatre in this country. Not only, as has been said, does the current situation restrict the repertoire plays that may be performed as intended by their authors, it also places a content restriction on new New Zealand plays. The hand of the state is holding the pen of the author. I don’t like that.

As an artistic loss – an image that our theatre may not display (smoking as act and smoke as visual effect) – smoking is not insignificant. Ironically it’s even more of a potent dramatic statement given the current status of smoking in our society. Consider a character like Cheryl West (Outrageous Fortune) – the fact that Cheryl smokes gives us impressions of her history and attitude to life in general; the times when Cheryl chooses to smoke tells us things about her internal state at a given moment; in how she smokes Robyn Malcolm can tell us things about Cheryl’s attitude and intentions – it’s a powerful expressive tool for both writer and actor. Without smoke, could Robyn and the writers be able to portray this character as vividly? Perhaps…some might even say possibly more creatively, more interestingly, but whose choice should this be, the artist or the government?

Furthermore, the ban renders an entire class of New Zealander – smokers – officially ‘unfit’ for honest theatre portrayal. Whatever you or I think about it, to many of the thousands of NZers who smoke the habit is an essential part of their humanity, as well as a significant element of their social self-expression. These people, citizens, taxpayers, potential patrons, currently cannot see themselves in the mirror that we claim to hold up. I, for one, do not consider this censorship anything like justified. 

Some people may consider tobacco smoking such a blight on society that this restriction on art (even if unintended) is tolerable, even desirable for the greater good.  This takes the argument into moral territory and there is no doubt a kind of ‘moral advocacy’ has played a role in the creation of these laws. Some argue, for example, that images of smoking in art ‘glamourise’ the habit and encourage it. This is such a generalisation without context that we have no choice but to distrust it, and the motivations of those who espouse it. It’s indicative of an attitude which holds that citizens shouldn’t have informed choice on some issues; either the information, the choice, or both should be restricted from the population for it’s own protection. The arrogance and zealotry inherent in this attitude worries me.

My feeling is, in this case at least, informed choice plus market forces should effect the will of the people on the issue without assistance from the government. If you cannot make a strong scientific argument on the dangers of smoking in theatre, (I doubt you can), then there is no need to ban it. If New Zealand society is offended by the prescence of cigarette smoking on stage for reasons of morality, social health, or even the smell of it, then, (if we simply inform/warn them), they will vote with their feet (with their bums??) and artists will abandon it. If informed NZers choose to act in or attend plays with real live tobacco smoking, why not let them?  

Dane Giraud       posted 22 Feb 2009, 12:55 PM

Aaron, great points with which I for one totally agree. I had wanted to comment on some previous posts that saw an actors or writers inclusion of cigarettes in a piece as lazy or somehow uncreative (a supremely narrow view) but you address this so well in your comments on Outrageous Fortune.      What an interesting comment you make on the laws exclusion of certain NZer’s being reflected in the mirror (as t’were). Homogeneity in NZ art is a problem now (with most artists thinking the same, expressing the same tastes, voting the same…) so why support a law that would further close ranks.

Matthew Roderick           posted 22 Feb 2009, 01:29 PM / edited 22 Feb 2009, 02:59 PM

fantastic points made by Aaron! thank you for your ability to express what I have been thinking as I have read these post since I last commented. I take it the answer to my question about “Cabaret” is that Sally can’t smoke on a New Zealand stage –

John, it is in the script by the way- and neither can i have the Emcee standing there with a big fat cigar in his mouth. I portrayed the character of Sam Silver the Copacabana Night Club owner in Copacabana (NZ premiere) in 2003. The director asked me if I would smoke cigars as Sam. Although I am a non-smoker I agreed with him that my character -in light of who he was and where and when he lived (New York in the 1940’s)- would smoke. I felt it was an important part of him that he did smoke cigars. Lucky it was before December of that year. What a fantastic extension of the character! A

s Aaron pointed out Cheryl West smoking tells us about who she is where she has come from where and how she lives, simply by lighting a cigarette. Same for Sam Silver with his cigar. It gave him power in the audition room of his night club and power when talking and relating to other characters. it told us about who he was and where he was and where he was going. Cheryl West no doubt understands the dangers of smoking yet she continues because that is part of her. To portray her not smoking would probably seem false, artificial. portraying Sam or Sally Bowles not smoking is a betrayal of the work.

Not having cigarette smoking onstage censors us from truly portraying what is what like living in the time of “The Glass Menagarie” or many other Williams’ plays. Smoking is part of who those characters and the plays/stories they are in, are. But not being able to depict smoking or the act of smoking defeats the whole premise of Art reflecting life as it then becomes not true. People smoke in real life, even with the ban on smoking in public spaces. if the play was set in New Zealand in a bar in 2009 then depicting smoking in that bar would be wrong as you can’t do that in real life if the play was set earlier then, as an audience member, I would expect to see people smoking or at least looking like they were smoking.

Michael Smythe                posted 22 Feb 2009, 02:53 PM / edited 22 Feb 2009, 02:53 PM

Heroically argued lads. I trust, after such exemplary creative effort, you find your cheques in the mail.

Dane Giraud       posted 22 Feb 2009, 05:44 PM

Michael, I really fail to see the point you are trying to make. Obviously tobacco companies are NOT financing NZ theatre (Can’t say I’d be turning down any independent money personally!), so, really, what are you saying? No one who has posted has voiced support of tobacco as a product at all. It seems that the general consensus is that serving a play is more important than personal politics and, that cigarettes can and often are vital to the representation of both character and setting. Concerning both these points, would you disagree?

Matthew Roderick           posted 22 Feb 2009, 06:37 PM

Michael are you suggesting that I am being paid by a tobacco company? Rather offensive if the truth be known.

Michael Smythe                posted 22 Feb 2009, 06:49 PM

Time for each protagonist to sum up. Please complete the following:

Tobacco or not tobacco: that is the question: …

Dane Giraud       posted 22 Feb 2009, 08:28 PM

I would like to sum up (unless anyone else wants to continue of course) by saying that this issue, and others like it, point to the need for an organisation, or even just a committed individual, to bring artistic freedom issues forward whenever such laws are introduced.

I do not necessarily think that the government maliciously tried to take actors/writers rights away in the smoking/workplace law, but our propensity (recently anyway) for sloppy legislation means that the arts could continue to unwittingly become compromised. Direct contact with the relevant ministers could go a long way; it also sends a strong message that theatre, film and the arts in general play complex and unique roles within society.

It could be worth a push now, with a new government in charge, to test responsiveness.

John Smythe      posted 22 Feb 2009, 08:54 PM / edited 22 Feb 2009, 10:31 PM

Yes of course “people smoke in real life”, Dane. They also commit arson, assaults, rape, murder; drink alcohol, swallow lethal pills, hang themselves, smoke marijuana and P, shoot up A-class drugs … all of which may be represented on stage. But they may not be done in reality. Because harming or impairing ourselves and others in the cause of ‘art’ is unprofessional (as well as illegal). That is the point.

To sum up: you can’t use arsenic but you can use old lace (although it’s likely to be new lace, even fake lace, made to look old).

No-one is saying we cannot create the illusion of smoking on stage. It’s just that we now know too much to continue on in the blissful ignorance of yesteryear. For the same reason most people no longer (in real life) cook in lead pots, muck around with mercury with their bare hands or have unprotected sex with strangers – all though all these things may be dramatised and performed through the ‘magic’ of theatrical illusion.

Robyn Malcolm, incidentally, has long since given up smoking (I assume this is still so), and Cheryl West and all the others who smoke on Outrageous Fortune apparently smoke herbal cigarettes (which would be neither here nor there to the tobacco companies as the illusion remains that the characters are still smoking their product). In one series Cheryl got good mileage out of trying to give up – and then the writers had her lapse …

But the interesting thing here is that for those episodes shot after December 2004, they were breaking the letter of the law, and no-one has been prosecuted as far as I know (surely we’d have heard if they had). Is this the precedent we need to assure us non-tobacco cigarettes can be used on stage?   

Afterthought: In the early James Bond movies he smoked as part of his suave and sexy persona because that’s how we saw smoking back then. Have the recent Bonds also smoked? (‘Scuse my ignorance but with so much live theatre to see, movies come second and I miss many.)

Susannah Donovan          posted 27 Feb 2009, 01:52 PM

Dear Sam Trubridge,

I have a degree in theatre from the University of Canterbury. I studied with Peter Falkenberg, who recently directed the Wellington and Dunedin Fringe theatre entry “Faust Chroma”. Peter Falkenberg is also the foremost practitioner of avant garde theatre in New Zealand. So My “symplistic” view of theatre as you deign to call it is actually rather well informed. I was, of course, being facetitious in my previous statement by taking the realism part of theatre to its logical, and therefore, most ridiculous extreme. However, if you would rather endanger peoples’ health just for the sake of some sort of attempt at realism in your performance, then be my guest. I was, however, in my previous statement, stating that I did not consider that to ever be necessary.

sam trubridge    posted 28 Feb 2009, 02:30 PM

Even Peter Brook has betrayed a rather simplistic view of theatre at times. As far as the debate of smoking on stage goes, I think Aaron demonstrates that this is not a black & white issue, that there are many concerns folded into this topic that make it both a very complex and very relevant debate. To use facetious hyperbole simplifies the argument a lot, turning up the volume of a particular stance, but it hardly responds to more insightful observations. Today I can see a speedboat race in Wellington harbour, burning up copious amounts of fuel, going round and round in circles, and doing even less for culture and humanity than another production of Joseph’s Technicolour Dreamcoat. The harm to our environment and health that this kind of activity produces seems to me much more worthy of our objection than one or two cigarettes on stage, which, as I have suggested a few times, does not need to be made with tobacco anyway.

luke stopford     posted 26 Mar 2012, 08:51 PM

I have just joined Theatreview, I am a bit of a newbie to this whole acting lark but am playing the lead role in an upcoming show at the comedy festival. Private Dick, a film noir long form improv.

I don’t particularly want to smoke 100 cigarettes in 4 days but would like to find a way to act it….. From all I could gather, the concencus was the red light fake cigarettes are no good, so please do any of you with experince have any practical suggestions? Please!

John Smythe      posted 26 Mar 2012, 08:58 PM

I suggest develop a running gag about never getting your ciggie lit – for a variety of reasons. If it’s improv, that is a permanent offer.

sam trubridge    posted 26 Mar 2012, 09:02 PM

Yeah, apparently they did that in Rome, The Musical. My source tells me that got old rather quick.

luke stopford     posted 26 Mar 2012, 09:41 PM

ah, ok  thanks, but any other suggestions? I can’t imagine running that gag that for 4 nights… someone mentioned incense maybe i will have to roll my own….

Dane Giraud       posted 26 Mar 2012, 10:30 PM

Harcore punk act G.G. Allin told his fans he was going to shoot himself (after taking a few of them with him) on stage. His audience quadrupled. If live performance isn’t going to hurt you or put you at risk in anyway, why go? Isn’t the whole point of live theatre to create an unsafe place?

Michael Wray    posted 27 Mar 2012, 04:35 PM / edited 27 Mar 2012, 04:35 PM

Did GG Allin follow through? Or did he leave his audience wondering why they left the performance feeling so disgustingly safe?

Michael Wray    posted 27 Mar 2012, 04:45 PM

Luke, as you may have gathered, you can’t win no matter what you do. If you smoke a real cigarette, whether tobacco or some other substance, your audience will specifically notice and temporarily be distracted from focusing on the play. If you use the red-light-fakes, your audience will specifically notice and temporarily be distracted from focusing on the play.

I’m talking as a habitual patron and not a practitioner. Dane will, as you have gather, talk about the purity of the art form being threatened by you not smoking a real cigarette – all very method, or something. Audiences don’t particularly care about that, but a real cigarette will put off the anti-smoking patrons while a fake cigarette won’t.

If I were you I’d go fake; it’s a play, not a test of willingness to “suffer for your art.” Everything else you present will be fake in that you won’t be doing them for real – you won’t be driving a real car, committing real crimes, having real sex or whatever film noir themes you’re going to explore. Why should a cigarette be any different?

John Smythe      posted 27 Mar 2012, 05:30 PM

Well said Michael x2. Also, it’s a simple point of law: you may not smoke in the work place / inside / in an enclosed place where other workers and/or members of the public will be exposed to your smoke. You need to know if you smoke for real you will be exposing yourself, your producer and the venue to legal action. 

Michael Smythe                posted 27 Mar 2012, 07:19 PM

I suggest an audio/video recording cum GPS tracking cum aniti-tourist  track device masquerading as a fake Sherlock Holmes pipe.

Dane Giraud       posted 27 Mar 2012, 07:35 PM

No. You are not a practitioner and I’ll tell you how I know… The snide comment aimed at the “method” something you would know nothing about. Where do these comments come from? Scared people. People confronted by real tears, real emotion, an actor, heaven forbid, losing control and actually showing vulnerability. NZ doesn’t have a traditional of method. Neither does it have a tradition of acting. Just saying.

John. How dare you call a theatre a work-space! A stage isn’t the smoko room at Otahuhu Plastics. It’s a holy space. Different rules should apply. When life is more profane that theatre, we got a problem.

Did GG follow through? No. But he often cracked punters in the head and was known to throw his own excrement at people. Kind of what you just did in post form.

sam trubridge    posted 27 Mar 2012, 08:30 PM

It is for comedy, a predominantly oratorial (not so visual/experiential) artform, so I would probably go with a fake cigarette. Then again, there is an absurdity to smoking a fake cigarette which may create unwelcome sniggers at times, or distract the audience. You are going to be self-conscious about it whatever you do now so maybe just ditch cigarettes altogether.

Some people seem fine with the suspension of disbelief and will go along with it, but I get really annoyed when the wine in the glass is just red resin or when the set wobbles precariously. To me it just looks like the same cheesy old theatre that teenagers roll their eyes at, and most of the population studiously attend once a year to please the ghosts of their High School English teachers. The decision to me really boils down to two things: (1) the performer’s preference, after all you are doing this to your body, and (2) what the show really needs – is a cigarette of any kind needed? – will a fake cigarette work in this production? – and can you get away with smoking tea leaves?

Of course Occupational Safety and Health laws apply on stage, but who tells an acrobat to stop putting themselves at risk? To a certain extent it is up to the performer as a professional to decide to take such a risk or endure a certain amount as a part of (or in the name of) their art. Without this decision – half a century of performance art would not exist, Olympic and sporting records would be miles shorter, and seconds late, the circus would not be the same, the All Blacks would not have won the cup last year and I think that even that last bastion of make-believe (acting) would not be the same.

Sam Jackson       posted 27 Mar 2012, 08:36 PM

I really don’t know how you suffer this place and its excuses for theatre practitioners, Dane. Presumably we have never seen you perform because no work space here (argh – mea culpa – holy temple?) is good enough for you. It constantly amazes me how often you accuse people of crimes only you are committing. Your offensiveness is offensive.

Dane Giraud       posted 27 Mar 2012, 08:49 PM

That was worth the wait…

Michael Wray    posted 28 Mar 2012, 11:35 AM

Sam T, the sporting endeavours analogy doesn’t quite apply. Olympic records that have been achieved with the use of banned substances are disqualified. The substances are banned not because they assist in taking seconds off of times, but because they are not safe for the user.

Additionally, unlike such substances, passive smoking presents a risk to the observer. It has been argued above at some point that the health risks to the observer are low with a comment that some things are more important than health… to which I rolled my eyes and just thought, do you want an audience or not?!

Dane: sorry if I struck a nerve with my off-the-cuff aside. Thought from reading your previous postings that a little humour would be appreciated. My bad. And I didn’t realise it would send you off on a non-sequitur on the ability of an actor to show an audience emotion and vulnerability.

Dane Giraud       posted 28 Mar 2012, 03:46 PM

Don’t worry about it. I come here to get my nerves struck…

sam trubridge    posted 28 Mar 2012, 04:26 PM

Michael, I wasn’t talking about the risks that athletes take with substances – I was talking about the risks that they take with their bodies and psyches, pushing themselves beyond comfort to achieve something inspiring and unprecedented. Ballet dancers are a good example too – since what they do affects their bodies for the rest of their lives. As for protecting the audience – give me a break – audiences for Punchdrunk shows are required to sign forms that release the company from responsibility for any harm caused in their shows: and they are sold out, months in advance, for months, at US$90-$120 a ticket, 200 people a time, 3 times a night. And given the so called risk we are talking about, why not just have an effective extraction/ventilation system, replace the tobacco with mint or tea leaves, or why not just stop if you receive a complaint from the public (which has been the policy in some venues)? Stop being pedantic and start thinking creatively. It is this kind of red-tape thinking that turns theatre into an exercise in pragmatics rather than an imaginative, rigorous and challenging artform. As you will have seen from my posts above I have never said that using real cigarettes are absolutely the only way to go. I have said that sometimes alternatives (fake cigarettes, mime, or any number of other inventions) are better. But you and John keep banging on like evangelical ministers about the evils of smoking on stage, and it seems just a little bit too precious and uncreative.

John Smythe      posted 28 Mar 2012, 04:51 PM / edited 28 Mar 2012, 04:52 PM

Puzzlement, Sam. I thought I was considering creative solutions and it was you that poo-poohed them. Otherwise, just stating facts about the law so that anyone who wants to challenge them knows what they are in for. And I would certainly support any person working throughout a season in the WORK PLACE (Dane) that is a theatre/performance space, who objected to being subjected to tobacco smoke. Likewise any audience member who, at the very least, should get their money back (unless a warning had been clearly posted before they booked).

More than anything else I would support any strategy that subverted the interests of BIG TOBACCO, who epitomise the worst aspects of capitalist, ‘might is right’, ‘the market rules’ cynicism. 

Dane Giraud       posted 28 Mar 2012, 05:11 PM

Death to America and all that?

sam trubridge    posted 28 Mar 2012, 05:22 PM

Of course we hate tobacco companies. But you can’t deny that cigarettes are a thing, and theatre needs things sometimes: they are called props. And sometimes the work calls for the use of real cigarettes. I noticed in your review of Teoremat in the 2010 Festival John, that you didn’t criticise them for using a real cigarette then – you seemed more fussed about the seats…

Michael Wray    posted 28 Mar 2012, 06:05 PM / edited 28 Mar 2012, 06:07 PM

I got what you meant about bodies, but I was also drawing parallels to the substance debate. As for these performers and their bodies, the key difference is the athlete or performer are only putting themselves in any risk. I’m a competitive masters runner who currently holds 4 NZ and 1 Oceania Gold medals; going into the danger zone, ignoring injuries against doctor’s advice – yep, guilty, but apart from my wife’s anger, I wasn’t placing anyone else at any risk. Same for the sports people and ballet dancers you reference.

It is contrary not to acknowledge passive smoking as a risk to the audience. I don’t know why the law has not permitted tea leaves etc to be used and can only assume they either didn’t think of it or didn’t want to go there. Presumably the same applies to setting rules for minimum ventilation allowances for smoking on stage.

In the meantime, performers and venues either comply or take the risks (with or without taking mitigating steps). The audiences will notice either way, so I don’t know how much the risk is worth it even if some roles justify it. Some people will be pissed off if smoke is coming their way, for health or for reasons of taste. You could play the “some things are more important than health” snob card as was previously suggested, but don’t expect your audience to come back for more if you do.

Ironically, try leaving Bats after a smoke-free performance on a winter night…. it’s pretty hard to get to the edge of the pavement without stinking of fags!

luke stopford     posted 28 Mar 2012, 06:13 PM

thanks for the insights, so numerous. peraps there is some merit in not being able to get a light all night, wouldn’t it be classic then to light a real one just at the very end! just light it without puffing and make a prophetic remark… i may try spaceman lollies and see if i can keep my status, perhaps a combination after all every show will bedifferent, one of the beauties of this artform.

if any of you would like to find out what happens, get to the musgrove theatre before 7pm on 16-19th May for Private Dick. All feedback gratefully accepted or other cheek turned 🙂