Jump to full article: Cleveland (OH) Plain Dealer, 2008-10-01
Author: Tony Brown/The Plain Dealer
Intro: We on the theater desk are trying to quit smoking. Fortunately, the Cleveland Play House is not.
Ohio's ban on smoking in public places has, on balance, turned out to be a good thing. No matter how tasty it would be to have a cigarette with a martini, the bar is a far pleasanter place without the secondhand smoke.
But the ban makes no exception for actors who have to smoke onstage or else fail to portray their assigned characters, leaving theaters a choice to self-censor or break the law.
The Play House is continuing to light up in its fine new production of Tennessee Williams' "The Glass Menagerie."
We applaud the civil disobedience.
Play House artistic director Michael Bloom is no lobbyist for recreational smoking. . . .
Tom, the narrator in Tennessee Williams' "The Glass Menagerie," has a smoke on the fire escape of the family fire escape while his mother, Amanda, wishes on the moon. But to pull off the scene, the actor, Daniel Damon Joyce, has to smoke inside the Cleveland Play House, which doesn't seem to bother actress Linda Purl. . . .
Ohio legislators say they don't want to open a Pandora's box by giving theaters a pass, because bars might suddenly try to pull a fast one by calling themselves theaters.
The New York solution looks like the best: Each individual production that uses smoking has to apply for a permit, which allows for a screening process.
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