On October 1st, Minnesota instituted a state-wide ban on smoking in bars, restaurant, and other nightspots. The law provides and exception for performers in theatrical productions. So some nightclubs have decided that all the world's a stage:

So some bars are getting around the ban by printing up playbills, encouraging customers to come in costume, and pronouncing them "actors."
The customers are playing right along, merrily puffing away - and sometimes speaking in funny accents and doing a little improvisation, too. […]

"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!"'

Typically, the anti-smoking nazis are humorless about the whole thing:

About 30 bars in Minnesota have been exploiting the loophole by staging the faux theater productions and pronouncing cigarettes props, according to an anti-smoking group.

"It's too bad they didn't put as much effort into protecting their employees from smoking," grumbled Jeanne Weigum, executive director of the Association for Nonsmokers.

It's too bad you can't smile and let people enjoy their lives as they see fit, Jeanne. The funniest "production" of all is at the Queen City Sports Place, which calls its nightly production "The Tobacco Monologues."