To smoke, or not to smoke...

Rod

Rod

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Looks like the tobacco nazi's want us to change history as well...


"To smoke, or not to smoke..."
Mon Nov 14, 2005 1:16 PM ET166


ROME (Reuters) - A stunned Italian actor had to stub out the cigarette he had lit up on stage after a spectator complained, forcing the theater to change the script of an Arthur Miller play to make it smoke-free.

"This had never happened to me in more than 300 performances," the actor, Sebastiano Lo Monaco, was quoted as saying by the Web site of Italian daily Corriere della Sera.

Italy has banned lighting up in all enclosed public places since January this year.

Lo Monaco was smoking, in line with the script, while playing the main character Sunday in Miller's "A View from the Bridge" at a theater in the northeastern city of Mestre, when a woman from the audience shouted "Put out that cigarette."

After a 15-minute suspension, the performance resumed with a modified script and a non-smoking protagonist.
 
Political correctness has gone crazy.
To change the script halfway thru the performance is ludicrous.
 
You have got to be effing kidding me.

Fear the righteous and misguided. This is just so wrong...and STUPID.

Wilkey
 
Mama mia! Man for Italy to be non smoking is incredible.
 
forcing the theater to change the script of an Arthur Miller play to make it smoke-free.
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wait a minute here -

isn't he an 'actor'?

couldn't he hold an unlit cigarette and, um, i dunno.....ACT like he's smoking?
 
Verisimilitude, baby. A stick shaped like a cigarette doesn't send up curls of smoke inviting contemplation nor does it get shorter as it is smoked, focusing our urgent intention on the burning stub.

Wilkey

celt said:
forcing the theater to change the script of an Arthur Miller play to make it smoke-free.
Click to expand...

wait a minute here -

isn't he an 'actor'?

couldn't he hold an unlit cigarette and, um, i dunno.....ACT like he's smoking?
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Ginseng said:
Verisimilitude, baby. A stick shaped like a cigarette doesn't send up curls of smoke inviting contemplation nor does it get shorter as it is smoked, focusing our urgent intention on the burning stub.

Wilkey
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so those dipshits dressed in tights look like real "Cats"? :sign:

there's a TON of fake stuff in theater. that's what makes it theater.


if there was a scene with heroin, do the actors actually shoot heroin, or do they 'act'?
 
That is just stupid. Noone complains when a character in a movie or play is beating their wife or murdering a family, but if they light a cigarette....

Friggin rediculous!
 
I want to find this woman and put out my cigar on her forehead. It would be the new scarlet letter. "The 52 Ring Gauge Burn" would come to be the mark of the ludicrously over-concerned PC moron. I'm a left-wing liberal in a lot of ways, especially socially, and I still have to say, DAMN, this is too far.

COme to think of it, I don't want to put out MY cigar on her forehead....what a waste of a nice cigar. Perhaps use white owls to properly mark these zealots.
 
and to think 5 years ago you could smoke anywhere and everywhere in Italy... this is starting to remind me of the movie The 6th Day where Arnie has to hide in his garage to smoke because it's illegal. We have to do something about this fast!
 
Well,

Celt, I'm not sure I get your point. This is a play, not a fantasy musical. It's theater, that's true, but I assume the director tried to be faithful to Miller's vision and in this case, the character smoked. One could argue as to the consideration Miller applied in constructing his character, but I think I would be safe in assuming that as an artist of his caliber, every detail was chosen for a reason.

As for heroin use in theater, that which could be simulated could be readily done while maintaining a faithful semblance of the actual act. For example, actors portraying Chinese coolies in an opium den smoking opium from pipes could use straight tobacco if the director wished.

To your general point, of course, actors act and directors direct. Together they decide what their "manufactured reality" will be in both scope and manner.

In regards to the last line of your post, ???

Anyway, this is not the real issue at play (pun).

Wilkey
 
Ginseng said:
every detail was chosen for a reason.

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oh, i understand that....

and admittedly i haven't seen too many plays.

but what i'm saying is:

in the few plays i HAVE seen, the prop haven't distracted me from storyline of the play.

i KNOW that i'm watching a play, so i don't expect everything to not be make-believe.


hey, i also beleive that it's stupid to not allow the actors to smoke in a scene, i just think they could get around it.

just my 2 cents.

by the way, i try not to take too much seriously.
 
Wow that is ridiculous. I'm sure there were plenty of pissed off patrons having to wait for the play to resume after that idiot had to chime in. Now, I'm not a "playgoer", so to say, but since when do people start heckling the actors, and would they even listen.

This lady has to be one of those 40 year old single women, overweight with 10 cats and an overgrown yard, with a loud obnoxious opinion about everything. Frankly, I thought they were a distinctly American phenomenon.
 
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