Smoking On Screen: OH Smoking On Stage

Bill sets stage for smoke-ban exemption
Senator seeks break for theatrical events

April 8, 2007

By JIM PROVANCE, BLADE COLUMBUS BUREAU

COLUMBUS – Picture 12 Angry Men without the smoke-filled jury room.

Or A Streetcar Named Desire without a chain-smoking Blanche.

Ohio’s ban on smoking in nearly all indoor public places has created a lot of drama in the state, but now a lawmaker wants to create an exemption for drama’s sake.

Sen. Robert Schuler (R., Cincinnati) has introduced a bill to allow actors and performers to light up on stage if smoking is essential to the script, despite the fact that smoking is off limits to everyone else in the theater.

Some theaters are just learning they could face fines as high as $2,500 if they allow actors to smoke during performances.

“We were provided with a whole list [of plays] in which smoking is a central part of the plot,” said Sen. Kevin Coughlin (R., Cuyahoga Falls), chairman of the Senate Health, Human Service, and Aging Committee that is considering the measure.

“The Graduate was expressly written with the main character smoking as he progresses in age from boyhood to manhood,” Mr. Coughlin said. “It has a meaning to the plot that the author intended.”

The state senator said he considers it an economic development issue. “Many productions in their contracts with theaters require that, if they present a play, it has to be done exactly as the script is written,” he said.

If passed, the measure would mark the first time the General Assembly has waded into the hot-potato smoking-ban issue after steering clear last year.

Voters approved one of the country’s strictest bans in November, prohibiting smoking in bars, restaurants, bowling alleys, and other indoor public places with few exceptions.

The ban also appears to prohibit smoking on indoor movie sets, raising questions as to whether it could hurt state efforts to market Ohio for location shooting. Mr. Schuler’s bill does not mention an exemption for movie sets.

“Ohio voters supported Issue 5 to protect all workers from second-hand smoke, and that includes workers in theaters and on movie sets,” said Tracy Sabetta, spokesman for the American Cancer Society. “If smoking is written into a theatrical performance and has to be portrayed, a prop cigarette can be used.

Actors don’t drink real alcohol when on stage.”

The ban went into effect on Dec. 7, but no warning letters or fines have been issued while the state writes rules on how the law would be enforced. A legislative panel is set to review proposed rules on April 16, and they could take effect as early as April 30.

Although a supporter of movie set and theater exemptions, Mr. Coughlin plans no further hearings on the bill in the near future. As a supporter of Issue 5, he believes the bill would become a lightning rod for amendments to weaken the ban.

Ward Whiting, executive director and booking agent for the Stranahan Theater in Toledo, said he was unaware it could face fines up to $2,500 if it were to allow someone like Blue Collar Comedy comedian Ron White to light up on the stage as he has in the past. Mr. White alternates between a glass of Scotch whisky and cigars or cigarettes during his stand-up routine.

“Ohio’s fire marshal requires that whenever there is an open flame on stage, whether it’s smoking or a BIC (cigarette lighter) being flicked, there has to be a fire person backstage just in case,” Mr. Whiting said. “The promoter who pays for the show pays the minimum four-hour cost.

“Smoking on stage is part of the theatrical event that is taking place, just as dancing and singing are,” he said.

Ms. Sabetta noted that Columbus had a similar ban, begining in 2004, with no exemptions for theaters or stand-up comedy. “We haven’t seen comedians avoiding Columbus because of its clean indoor air law,” she said.

Mr. Whiting noted the 2,400-seat Stranahan has a strong ventilation system designed to suck air from the immediate stage area to the outside to prevent audience exposure. In much smaller community theaters, however, the audience breathes the same air as performers.

“We had this issue last year when we presented A Few Good Men in which [Colonel] Jessep [played by Jack Nicholson in the film version] smokes a cigar,” said Susan Metz-Foster, immediate past president of the Ohio Community Theatre Association. She’s a director with The Footlight Players in a 164-seat theater in Coshocton.

“This was before the ban took effect, but we were concerned, because we are a small community theater and we didn’t want people in the front row being exposed,” she said. The troupe opted to use a fake cigar purchased from a costume store.

“These props look so realistic, even on the small stage and close up,” she said. “I would defy anybody to tell he wasn’t smoking a real cigar. Theater is all about illusion. The prop gives the illusion of smoking.”

Still, she wondered how a theater such as hers could perform 12 Angry Men, a play centering on jury deliberations in a 1950s murder trial, without the smoke-filled room. “That is such a period piece,” she said. “You have to do it period or it’s not going to work. Our theater is considering this one for next season. If you can’t do it with the smoke, you probably choose another show.”
Contact Jim Provance at: jprovance@theblade.com? or 614-221-0496.
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Ban may snuff out smoking in plays

March 18, 2007?

COLUMBUS — Bill Conner can’t imagine staging “Twelve Angry Men” without having actors light cigarettes onstage, but he worries the state’s new smoking ban will prohibit a key element in many performances.

The play, which recreates a smoke-filled jury room during heated deliberations, wouldn’t be the same without cigarettes, said Conner, president of the Columbus Association for the Performing Arts.

Musicians, actors and other performers worry that a new statewide ban on indoor smoking in public places will limit their ability to smoke while performing.

“Can you imagine ‘Twelve Angry Men’ with 12 guys not smoking? For a theater, when you’re doing a piece that’s period-based, not having them smoke would be kind of odd,” he said.

The city of Columbus already has a similar ban, and has not received complaints about performers smoking during shows — such as Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones. Ohio officials hope to have rules in place to enforce the new statewide law next month.

“Enforcement is complaint-based, so if there was a complaint, the local enforcement entity would investigate,” said Kristopher Weiss, Ohio Department of Health spokesman. Under the law, Weiss said, both establishments that allow smoking and smokers themselves could be ticketed.

The law leaves little room for interpretation, said Marie Collart of the Central Ohio Breathing Association.

“They are in a public space,” she said. “Performers should not be lighting up in public.”

Still, Conner is hoping for a little leeway. In New York City, despite a 4-year-old smoking ban, theaters can apply for a waiver to smoke during a performance.

Ohio State University Law professor David Goldberger thinks that there’s room for moderation in the enforcement of the new ban.

“For the most part, public officials are pretty sensible about these things, the law notwithstanding,” he said.

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Hey, Keith Richards: Beware the smoking ban

March 17, 2007
Mark Ferenchik, THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

A comedian at a Short North bar lighted up a cigarette and invited smokers in the audience to join him onstage.

It’s legal to smoke indoors if you’re part of a performance, Doug Stanhope told the crowd last month at the High Five Bar & Grill on N. High Street.

It seemed plausible.

The bar soon was filled with smoke as folks sat on the edge of the stage and puffed away.

After all, they’d seen it before.

The Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards, who has performed at Nationwide Arena since Columbus’ indoor-smoking ban took effect in 2005, often drags on a drooping cigarette while he’s performing.

And an actor in Twelve Angry Men recently lit one up on the Palace Theatre stage as part of the play.

But does freedom of speech or expression really mean freedom to smoke?

The Columbus ban on indoor smoking makes several exceptions but doesn’t say anything about performers firing one up. Neither does the statewide ban, which most likely will be enforced beginning in April.

So when your favorite rocker strides to the front of the stage with a Marlboro dangling from his lips, he technically can be nailed.

“Enforcement is complaintbased, so if there was a complaint, the local enforcement entity would investigate,” said Kristopher Weiss, Ohio Department of Health spokesman. And under the state law, not only can venue proprietors be cited, but smokers themselves can be if they refuse to put out their cigarettes, he said.

The Columbus ban specifically bars smoking in auditoriums. That clears the air on the issue for Marie Collart of the Central Ohio Breathing Association.

“They are in a public space,” she said. “Performers should not be lighting up in public.”

But Ohio State University law professor David Goldberger thinks officials will let performers smoke away.

“For the most part, public officials are pretty sensible about these things, the law notwithstanding,” said Goldberger, a First Amendment expert who teaches constitutional law.

Smoking during a performance is not what the law was designed to prevent, he said. The law is aimed at protecting the public’s health, not censoring performers.

“Except in the most backward jurisdictions, accommodations are generally made for these kinds of things,” he said.

Bill Conner hopes so. Any ban on performers would be restrictive, said Conner, who is president of the Columbus Association for the Performing Arts.

“Can you imagine Twelve Angry Men with 12 guys not smoking? For a theater, when you’re doing a piece that’s period-based, not having them smoke would be kind of odd,” he said.

New York exempts performers from indoor-smoking bans, but theaters have to request waivers.

It’s no big deal for Russ Sciandra, a lobbyist and director of the Center for a Tobacco Free New York.

“It’s like trivial, in the sense that no one’s really being exposed, to any serious extent,” said Sciandra, who pushed for New York’s statewide smoking ban in 2003.

Actors can use fake cigarettes, said Tracy Sabetta, who helped lead the SmokeFreeOhio campaign.

That suggestion led Conner to joke, “Who knows what’s in those cigarettes? “

Columbus has received no complaints about onstage smoking. If it did, inspectors probably would get to it the next day and treat it like any other indoor-smoking violation, said John Richter, who supervises Columbus’ environmentalhealth section.

Ultimately, enforcement is up to the authorities’ discretion, City Attorney Richard C. Pfeiffer Jr. said.

That brings us back to Keith Richards, who found himself in the cross hairs of the smoking police in Scotland last year because he did what he usually does onstage.

What saved him from a fine? The open-air Glasgow stage didn’t qualify as an enclosed public place.
mferenchik@dispatch.com