During the recent Chicago production of the classic play “Twelve Angry Men,” George Wendt and other actors portraying the bickering, deadlocked jurors lit up cigarettes on the stage of the LaSalle Bank Theatre.
In following the play’s script, the actors violated the city’s anti-smoking ordinance.
This clash between art and public-health concerns became fodder for Chicago’s aldermen Friday, as a City Council panel considered — then rejected — a proposal to create a loophole in the ban so actors can smoke on stage.
Ald. Burton Natarus (42nd), proposed the exemption at the behest of Lou Raizin, president of Broadway in Chicago. The group presented the recent run of “Twelve Angry Men” and a long list of other works that have brought clouds of smoke to stages at downtown theaters.
Forbidding actors to smoke in cases where the playwright would have wanted them to puff away amounts to “asking an artist to change his art,” Raizin told members of the council’s Buildings Committee at City Hall.
Committee members voted 4-2 against the ordinance granting an exemption for actors who smoke in the line of duty.
Ald. Ed Smith (28th), a leading advocate of smoking restrictions in the city, said he did not buy Raizin’s suggestion that theatrical performances could bypass Chicago in favor of other cities where actors can smoke on stage.
When Raizin told the aldermen that smoking long has been a part of society and the art that reflects real life, Smith shot back, “It’s also been a part of our death.”
Raizin said actors have continued to smoke during Broadway in Chicago productions, even after city officials “strongly suggested the need to enforce” the city’s restrictions on public smoking. And after the council vote, a defiant Raizin told reporters that actors would not stop smoking as part of their work.
“We are not out there to tell the artist to modify their art,” said Raizin, whose group also presents performances at the Cadillac Palace Theatre and the Oriental Theatre.
In recent years, actors have portrayed characters who smoke during performances of “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,” “Guys and Dolls,” “The Graduate” and many other productions, Raizin said. Rings of smoke also rose from the LaSalle Bank Theatre stage in March and April, when Kathleen Turner took drags from a cigarette as Martha in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”
The city’s smoking ban took effect in January 2006, with bars and restaurants with bar areas given until July 2008 to eliminate smoking. But the Illinois House approved a statewide smoking ban in public places Tuesday, and Gov. Rod Blagojevich has said he is likely to sign the measure.
The state prohibition would take effect Jan. 1 and would trump any exemptions that the aldermen might grant, said Kelvy Brown, legislative coordinator for the city’s Health Department.
The Health Department has not cited any theaters for violating the ban, Brown said. City officials do not have time to police theaters and would act only in response to complaints. The city has gotten no complaints of smoking on stage.
Brown suggested that local theatrical productions replace tobacco products with herbal cigarettes. That has been the practice in New York, the nation’s theater mecca, in the four years since a smoking ban took effect.
The issue has vexed thespians around the world as smoking bans become increasingly prevalent.
Three theater companies in Colorado filed a lawsuit against the state health department to win the right to smoke on stage. A judge in Denver threw out the suit in October, rejecting the argument that the smoking ban violated the plaintiffs’ constitutional freedom of expression.
The Broadway in Chicago productions are not the only shows in Chicago where theaters are flouting the smoking ban in the name of art.
Actors portraying rebellious teenagers in “Crossing California” said Friday afternoon that they planned to smoke in that evening’s preview show at the Lifeline Theatre in the Rogers Park neighborhood.
Katie McLean, who plays the role of an avid smoker, fires up six or seven cigarettes in each performance. She could not conceive of playing the part in a smoke-free environment.
“Smoking really defines a lot of who she is,” McLean said of her character, Michelle Wasserstrom. “She defines cool and not cool by what kind of cigarettes people smoke.”
The Royal George Theatre’s general manager said the house does not allow smoking as a matter of policy, but Second City Theatre vice president Kelly Leonard said “the Chicagoan in me is like, ‘Suck it up.'”
“Is someone really going to die from a five-minute scene in a two-hour play that they are seeing once in their life?” Leonard said.
Natarus, who lost his re-election bid and is in the last month of a 36-year run as alderman of his downtown ward, said he quit smoking long ago. Still, Natarus said he cannot fathom a smokeless play about cowboys in the Wild West or organized-crime figures, bootleggers and political kingpins in the Prohibition era.
Ald. Ariel Reboyras (30th) was one of the four who voted down the Natarus proposal. Reboyras said he did so because he is against smoking, but readily conceded, “I cannot imagine Humphrey Bogart without a cigarette.”
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