Actors will be banned from smoking on stage in Wales but not in England under new laws – prompting anger from a leading director.
Actors banned from smoking on stage
March 30, 2007
Gerry Holt
Actors will be banned from smoking on stage in Wales but not in England under new laws – prompting anger from a leading director.
Despite being a vociferous anti-smoking campaigner, artistic director of the Wales Theatre Company Michael Bogdanov said he would rather his actors be able to smoke.
But the Welsh Assembly Government said allowing people to light up on stage would ‘undermine’ the ban and be ‘unfair’ on others whose lives are being affected by it.
The former Royal Shakespeare Company director said: ‘I’ve used cigarettes, cigars and pipes in productions all my life simply because it’s a cultural thing and something that marks certain people out from others.
‘It’s possible for people to go through the motions of smoking – drawing on a cigarette butt or pretending to smoke – but if you have a character who is a chain smoker, it could break audience concentration if they are just pretending.
‘There are so many plays with lots of directions for people to light up, people saying ‘pass the cigarettes’ or ‘I can’t find my matches’.
‘Nevertheless, theatre is the art of illusion.’
His actors will be among those feeling the effects of the new laws as they put their chain- smoking mimes into practice ready for a musical about the life of Valleys boxer Tommy Farr, due to come to Cardiff’s Sherman Theatre in May.
‘The Contender is set in the boxing world of the 30s when smoking was part of urban culture – but I will just have to deal with it by having people mime,’ said Mr Bogdanov.
‘They’ll roll up some tobacco, get a match out, strike it and pretend to light up, then they’ll take a long drag on… nothing.
‘There’s images of boxing venues in dark rooms with smoke curling up into the light – and I think the audience will miss that.’
But Mr Bogdanov, who does not like his actors lighting up for fear it might damage their voices, said the ban was something the theatre world would just have to get used to.
‘The first time anybody appeared naked on stage there was a massive outcry – but now people are more often on stage naked than they are in clothes,’ he said.
He added: ‘If the play calls for naturalism and for an actor to smoke I would rather they did but I’m perfectly willing to accept that they can’t.
‘Being a non-smoker, I’m fully supportive of the ban on smoking in public places.
‘The theatre will cope with it.’
A Welsh Assembly Government spokesman said actors needed to be afforded the same level of protection as other workers under the smoking ban.
‘An exemption for performers would undermine the health message about the harm from exposure to second-hand smoke, and would appear unfair to the wider public in Wales,’ he said.
But a spokesman for the Department of Health, which is overseeing the ban in England, said: ‘Where the artistic integrity of a performance makes it appropriate for a person who is taking part in that performance to smoke, the part of the premises in which that person performs will not be required to be smoke-free for the performer only during the performance.’
