Theatrical Smoke

The following article was published in the LTG news - May 2002, I thought it made interesting reading...!
Cough... Cough...!!!

Why do so many people start to cough as soon as theatrical smoke starts to billow around? You would think that actors and opera singers would have had the stuff banned if it were harmful! At some recent productions at Stratford, the smoke and haze machines have been working non-stop throughout!

John Davies of Barn Theatre, Welwyn, has done his research, and this is his report:

“The production did however generate one complaint, from a member who suffered an asthma attack during the performance, triggered she believed, by the haze machine that was used to give definition to a particular lighting effect.

I confess that I have felt uneasy in the past about acting in the middle of clouds of smoke, so I went to some trouble to investigate the possible harmful effects of stage smoke and haze. The best evidence I could find was a study of professional actors carried out by the Mount Sinai medical school in New York, which concluded that extensive exposure to such effects could lead to increased incidence of sore throats among actors, but did not appear to increase the likelihood of asthma attacks, nor could they identify any other harmful health effects.

It’s worth pointing out that ‘smoke’ is in fact a misnomer: the machines don’t actually burn anything, they heat a liquid to produce a vapour.”

LTGNewsMay02