Thus, the Court of Quebec ruled on Tuesday that smoking on stage was not a gesture of artistic expression and that, therefore, it violated the law. I sincerely wonder if the judge who passed this castrating judgment for creation has ever attended a play. However, judgments would have to be ordered by competent people with full knowledge of the facts.
I smoked everything on stage… or pretended to! Fake pot in Harold and Maude with Olivette Thibault, up to the electronic cigarette in Kiss at TNM, via a Benson & Hedges (the longest please!) for the so-called Bar scene in The dark side of the moon by Robert Lepage (cigarette that I had to give up during performances in Singapore which forbids even the evocation of it) and also a fake cigarette made of some kind of fake tobacco that made me sick more than a real one could have do it in the room Unidentified human remains and the true nature of love, directed by André Brassard at the Théâtre de Quat’Sous in 1991!
And, oddly enough, I have never smoked in life, and I have not had any addictive development as a result of these performances. I am only a theater smoker! These are my characters who smoke… not me!
Needless to say, I find it very frustrating that our scenes are deprived of them. Should we also avoid pretending to drink alcohol on stage to avoid encouraging people to drink? We could perhaps also ban the theater, television and cinema on the pretext that it risks making people dream and giving ideas considered disturbing or too daring for the spectators?
Or, let’s simply develop a health passport that would prohibit access to spectators having problems with artistic freedom!
Read the column “A world without smoking” What do you think? Express your opinion