Theatrical weed smoking

curtis73 said:

I can disable the fire alarm, but then I'm highly illegal for not having adequate fire alert systems in operation for public spaces with a capacity of more than 25 persons.

An appropriate fire watch won't cover having the system disabled during the performance? Station someone at the fire panel with the system on test and they can reenable the audibles and call the FD if there is a real fire.

Jesse Ransom said:

Brian said:

Just imagine if restaurants tested. I have worked in restaurants where I was the only clean person on the staff.

I used to cook in a bar that required a hair clipping test (so they could look back at what was in your system for the last month or 60 days or whatever it was).

I don't feel it was an effective item in their hiring toolbox.

(Yeah, I know the quoted post is several years old. We're off and rolling again already )

I've heard more and more about companies using saliva tests that can "detect marijuana up to 3 days after use" - and the hiring managers mentioning this - figuring if you can't give it up for even 3 days you really are a dumbass and we don't want you. 

minivan_racer said:

curtis73 said:

I can disable the fire alarm, but then I'm highly illegal for not having adequate fire alert systems in operation for public spaces with a capacity of more than 25 persons.

An appropriate fire watch won't cover having the system disabled during the performance? Station someone at the fire panel with the system on test and they can reenable the audibles and call the FD if there is a real fire.

This would be an option... if anyone knew the admin PIN on a fire panel that was out of compliance 8 years ago.  I have since been able to guess the PIN and I have control over those functions.  One of the issues is that the panel (instead of having one node/card for each alarm) has one node/card for each zone.  That means you can't disable an individual alert, like turning off smoke detection and audible alerts while leaving strobe and IR active.  You have to turn off everything in the zone.  Normally, you could turn off strobe and audible and have someone watch the panel, but on this ancient system, it's either on or off for each zone.  Long story short, we have a few bids in the works for a new system.

Pete. (l33t FS) said:

also, I would have gone full-in on expecting the audience to fill in the gaps, and had a bong-like prop that clearly was not a bong, had no special effects (biological or visual), and had "THIS IS A BONG" written on it 

Entirely dependent on the show, the genre, and the artistic direction.

For instance, let's say you're watching a scene in Forrest Gump and you notice that someone in a scene is smoking a candy cigarette.  It doesn't fit.  The fact that it's a candy cigarette draws your focus away from the reality of the genre.  If, however, you're doing Godspell or Hair, a candy cigarette might be a metaphor for narcotics.  If you're doing some large stage production in which someone happens to be smoking, a candy cigarette just needs to look the part from 40 feet away for five seconds and no one will really notice.  It's the difference between metaphor, suspension of disbelief, and realism.

In the case of the play I was discussing, it was a realist drama with 100 audience members in a very small venue.  The first row was about 8' from the actor taking a bong hit.  It was also one of my favorite scenes ever in a play.  It involves an adult grandson completely spilling his guts about the gory death of his friend and the audience is sobbing and grossed out... when the grandmother says "I'm not wearing my hearing aid, so I didn't hear anything you said."  The audience erupts in laughter, only to realize that she DID hear every word, she was just saving her grandson the embarrassment of having bared his vulnerability and the audience is completely floored.  By the end of that scene the audience has become emotionally exhausted.  I mention that to point up the need for realism.  I couldn't ask the audience to suspend disbelief and pull focus from the intensity of the moment.  They needed to see a real bong hit, process it instantly and without question, and move on to the flesh of the scene.  I felt like asking for imagination at that point would have done a disservice to the realism of the emotion they were about to be dragged into.

I'm kinda glad this zombie canoe came back up.  Gave me a chance to reflect on that brilliant play.  4000 Miles.  Good play if you're looking for something to read.

In honesty, I forget how I ended up doing it.  I remember actually buying a bong (always a hoot on a company credit card), and I may have used an e-cig with no nicotine glued in the neck of the bong so when the actor took a hit they could actually draw on the e-cig.

Ha that's what I get for not looking at the dates or reading the entire thread.  Someone else mentioned something similar the last time it was revived.