Jack Lord, playing Jack Carter in our Edinburgh production of Get Carter said to me in re-rehearsals that not being able to smoke onstage was like 'amputating' a part of his performance. Festival goers should bear in mind this show has already toured Scotland, prior to the introduction of the onstage smoking ban in March, and so audiences have already experienced the show with its characters lighting up throughout. The ban on an accurate representation of smoking onstage isn't the joke some of the Scottish newspapers and pundits have implied it is.

We live in dangerous times. Secularism and logic are threatened by zealotry. Supernatural belief systems are being given voice and influence in the institutions of the state, in how they spend our money and shape our lives. Rational thought, science, common-sense are under suspicion. While most of us would support a ban on tobacco smoking in enclosed spaces, it makes no sense to ban its representation in art, including the use of tobacco substitutes. Maybe the Scottish Executive didn't consider the implications for TV, cinema and theatre when the legislation was drafted. Whether it did or didn't, its firm refusal to debate a dispensation for Festival companies shows determination not to appear weak in the face of logic.

Scotland faces significant public health issues, but this isn’t the way to deal with them. The line between representation and actuality is being eroded. A woman writes a fictitious play set in a Sikh temple. Birmingham Rep puts it on. The theatre has to suspend the run because of violent protests, but no-one is arrested. A satirical music theatre piece includes a character who thinks he's Jesus and wears a nappy. Christian fundamentalists protest and local authority theatres drop the show. A novel set in London's Brick Lane is to be filmed. Local businessmen are up in arms, threatening to stop shooting because they don't like the portrait it offers of their world. It was once the case that actors playing villains from the Bible had to obtain a dispensation from their Priest because it was thought evil adhered to them through the very act of representation.

A similar phenomenon can be seen with regard to smoking onstage. Actors and directors who want to do it are identified as somehow standing in the way of public health reform. This dubious moral outrage is calculated to function as a form of censorship. And that really is the point. I am told there may be legislation in the pipeline that will require theatres presenting work that includes partial or full nudity to obtain a lap-dancing license. If this is true it would scupper Oxford Stage's current very bold production of Milton's Paradise Lost. Dangerous times indeed.

Jonathan Holloway, Artistic Director, Red Shift Theatre Company. 13th August 2006.