Smoked Out

Apparently some bars in Minnesota have come up with a creative way to get around the state's indoor smoking ban: taking advantage of a loophole for actors onstage, some bars are having special "theater nights" and designating their patrons "actors." They're even getting into the spirit of it, nicotine addictions aside:

"They're playing themselves before Oct. 1. You know, before there was a smoking ban," owner Brian Bauman explained. Shaping the words in the air with his hands, like a producer envisioning the marquee, he said: "We call the production, `Before the Ban!'"

Discussion of Grotowski, Artaud, and bodied representation are strictly optional.