Food in the Green Room and Smoking in costume?

[JDL]

How do you and your actors/crew use your Green Room? What is your smoking in costume policy? I ask because our new Costume Shop Supervisor has taken it upon himself to incorporate a few new rules pertaining to food/smoke and costumes. In the meeting before our final rehearsal before techs, he told the cast/crew that all food has to be removed from the Green Room at half-hour and they are not to smoke in costume AT ALL. They couldn't even put on a robe or coat. They are to change into the clothes they wore to the theatre then change back into the costume before making an entrance. I understand the need to preserve costumes for the run, but is this a bit much?

[maximillionx]

At my current job, the green room and changing room are one in the same.  So all the costume and space for relaxing during the show are in this back room.

As far as costume policies go, I think it really depends on the costume designer/wardrobe supervisor.  Our costume designer in college would have had a fit if he caught you with anything other than water....god forbid you were outside smoking.  My current costume designer could care less either way.  But regardless of which one you have, it's their preference and they have the right to dictate policy in regards to costumes.  If they want to take the risk of letting someone eat a meatball sub in a Victorian era costume, that's their choice and ultimately their responsibility to get the stain out.  It's also up to actors and management to bring common sense into play if you do have a laid-back designer/supervisor.  You should have a respect for the costumes.

[missliz]

Smoking in costume has always been a no-go, at least at every theater I've worked in. The smell is difficult to get out. This is double enforced if you're working with rental costumes. Food has been a little more lax- just cover up first.

We recently implemented no eating backstage because we've got mice! Tea, water, etc are fine.

[dewitt]

My upcoming show will be in a theatre where the green room and dressing rooms are connected but are definitely different rooms.
I will be working for a Jewish theatre company who have a reputation for really feeding their cast and crew well during the process. They choose the rules about food vs costumes it doesn't matter what I think. Actors usually put a robe over their costume to smoke on the loading dock. However this theatre is a shared space on a college campus and the campus went smoke
free this past summer. I am very curious to see if this will lead to issues in performance. The theatre is on the edge of campus
so the neighboring parking lot is not campus property. I have seen actors and crew on other productions wandering to the "smoke zone" during the breaks. I have a feeling that if I don't keep an eye on them we could lose a lot of rehearsal time hunting down
people who have gone out for a quick smoke. Then again I could end up with a cast of health aware non-smokers.  time will tell.
Ultimately I agree that the s.m. should back whatever rules the producer and costumer decide on.

[MatthewShiner]

I think the producer/theater company has a right to make the rules regarding behavior in costume - I then worry if there is wardrobe crew to help cast in and out of costume if they do want to smoke on a break - - - maybe if that gets to be a pain, they may want to go to robes.

Usually, most actors follow common sense in dealing with food, drink and smoking . . . I have rarely had a major issue about this.  (Like Ribs and Pasta . . . )

[nmno]

Concur that smoking in costume has been prohibited pretty much everywhere I've worked.  They've changed out of costume to street clothes or a robe if they wanted to go outside to smoke.

As far as food, always just had the policy of had to put a robe on.  Removed from the green room might be a bit too strict a policy for me, especially if the room is used by other people, namely stage crew and myself - ultimately if the wardrobe sup. wants to make policy no eating in costume even with a robe, I would support it (s/he is the one who has to clean up the mess) but the "remove from the room" seems much (perhaps it just needs to be closed up).  My other part of it would be if s/he wants all food removed that's fine, but then s/he is in charge of it - I don't want it to become MY job to make sure food is appropriately put away (I would of course discuss this with the wardrobe sup. more diplomatically than that).  This of course doesn't take into account any specifics about your situation (are you working with young people, is the green room incredibly small, is it necessary to go thru the green room to get to the stage...)

We'd like to think that actors would exercise some personal responsibility but...  It was intermission, an actor was sitting in costume (no robe) eating birthday cake and of course dropped it on his pants, frosting all over.  The wardrobe supervisor was calm about it - it was clearly an accident but there wasn't a way to clean & dry the pants adaquetly before he had to be onstage, so she went thru the racks of the understduies and found another pair that would kind of fit.  The actor put on the new pants, sat back down, (within sightline of the wardrobe sup.) and returned to eating his cake!  We all looked stupified and finally I said, "Dude, what are you doing?" His response, with a confused look, "What?" "PUT ON A ROBE!"  I don't think it ever really clicked in his head...

[kallulah]

When we did Equus, the bulk of our actors were in these skin tight horse costumes that took forever to put on.  With all the smoking that takes place during the play a lot of our quitters started smoking again during the run and they'd run out between acts to drag a fag.

Luckily this was a great ensemble and they were very responsible about not eating in their costumes, especially between matinees. 

As for our costume designer.  She didn't seem to care, or she didn't know they were doing it.  She's pretty laid back but she would stress out, of course, about difficult costume pieces and props.  I think the most frustrating part of those costumes for her was the sheer that was used to represent the horses' chests.  They started ripping mid-run and she had to come back in to re do them.  That was just normal wear and tear though.

Ok, I went way off topic.  I think it's up to the costume designer, the rules they want to enforce on the costumes.  Especially when you're understaffed costume designers, as well as anyone else on a show, doesn't want to be cleaning up after the actors.

Even if they are competent, that's no reason to act irresponsibly.  Eating while in costume is a huge risk, especially when the costume cost a doozy.  Smoking in costume same deal.  Sure there's laundry on the weekends but there are some stinks that just don't rub out.

[kiwitechgirl]

Seems to me that removing all food from the green room is a bit unreasonable - Wardrobe and I do try to enforce the "no eating in costume" rule, but our green room is where our kitchen facilities are so we couldn't get rid of the food even if we wanted to!  As for smoking, where I can I try to stop them smoking in costume but if it's something that's particularly difficult to get in and out of then a coat or robe is OK - not great, but OK.

[BLee]

I'd bet that the costumers concern is less about the idea of food in the green room, but more with having food left in the green room. I remember a time when crew members would bring food to the green room to chow down before their call. Although most of the time they finished eating and cleaned up after themselves we did have a couple of incidences.  One particular time some soup that was left on the green room table. It was a styrofoam cup with a cheap plastic lid and the responsible party ran off to the dressing room when an early actress asked for assistance. Well, the lid wasn't on the best and sure enough someone else entered the green room and threw their bag on the table. The soup went flying and left a huge mess (luckily it landed on a floor mat that was easily removed and cleaned). Had anyone is costume happen to be sitting in the green room or passing through at that unlucky moment it could have been a horrible situation.

Accidents happen and I can understand wanting to minimize the risk by removing food from any location where costumes will be frequently present. As for smoking that smell is very difficult to remove and there are people who are easily bothered by the burned chemicals, including audience members who may be sitting close enough to the stage to catch an unpleasant whiff. Perhaps the costumer herself is bothered by the smell of cigarettes.

[On_Headset]

Two years ago I worked on a show where the production manager went a little overboard and banned food from the backstage areas altogether except for our (tiny!) staff kitchen. What wound up happening is that people smuggled food into their dressing rooms and ate it there instead, so we had no idea where food and food debris might have been left, and we also forfeited all control over what people were eating. We also had a few "Hey, where's XYZ?" incidents where someone had gone on a food run without telling anyone.

I persuaded her to change the policy so that we could set out some "dry snacks" in the green room: dry cereal, cheese and crackers, bananas and apples, etc. It greatly reduced the amount of eating that went on in dressing rooms and seemed to work as a compromise--of course, we had to raid the SM budget to do it.