Censorship is a strange business. Who’s to say what can or cannot be written on a page or said on a stage? Isn’t that always up to the person writing or saying the words?

At last Tuesday’s opening night performance at ASU Gammage of “The Light in the Piazza,” the specter of censorship raised its head in a most peculiar context. Somewhere near the top of the second act of this musical set in 1950s Italy, an American woman and an Italian man engaged in an act so shocking that it provoked an outcry from a member of the audience.

What did this couple do?

They smoked cigarettes.

They not only smoked them, but blew rings as they relaxed in the warmth of a Florentine afternoon. They smoked cigarettes–and enjoyed them.

That was too much for a guy in the audience, who yelled loudly and with a certain edge of malice, so that all could hear:

“That’s stupid!”

Well, thank you for your opinion, but could you please find a different forum for it? Perhaps while you’re looking, you could employ your gray matter to the end of understanding this: In the 1950s, everybody smoked. They had no idea of the link between nicotine and cancer. None. And when people put on a play about a certain time, they are usually obliged to recreate the habits of that time. They dress as people then dressed, speak as people then spoke, and behave as people then behaved. This probably sounds embarrassingly obvious to the majority of people, but for such benighted souls as the “That’s stupid!” fellow, I imagine such education is required.

This pointless little interruption of an otherwise fantastic evening in the theater might have been an isolated incident, save for the fact that smoking onstage is under serious assault in all kinds of places. It is already illegal to portray smoking onstage–even when the actors use herbal cigarettes–in Colorado and in Lincoln, Neb. Chicago has a ban in place, as well, but it is complaint‑driven, and so far, no one has complained. (Chicago actors had better hope that our “That’s stupid!” patron doesn’t attend Windy City theater anytime soon.)

Legislation banning onstage smoking is being considered elsewhere, perhaps encouraged by the Motion Pictures Association of America’s recent announcement that smoking onscreen will now be an element in assigning ratings.

This has caused havoc. Many plays involve key scenes in which characters smoke. Try staging “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” without cigarettes. A Denver production of “Mark Twain Tonight,” a one‑man show about the great American writer, was canceled when the director realized that depicting Mark Twain without his constant cigar‑chomping would be historically so inaccurate as to amount to lying.

To deter any accusation that I am an agent for Philip‑Morris, I must disclose that I am myself a confirmed nonsmoker. (No cigarettes in my house, my car, or near my children, thank you.) I am also a confirmed anti‑murderer and anti‑rapist, but I am not going to protest the depiction of either act on stage, since that would mean getting rid of, just for starters, all Shakespearean and Greek tragedies. Mr. “That’s Stupid!” may protest that murder or rape on stage will not inspire the real thing, whereas smoking onstage just might. But how does he know?

Bans such as these always run the risk of hypocrisy. What if a play uses onstage smoking as some sort of anti‑tobacco message? I bet the antismokers would make an “exception.” And what happens if Native Americans–who gave us tobacco, after all–are depicted onstage using tobacco in the sacred manner they have used it for centuries? Should that be made an exception? And if so, why shouldn’t exceptions be made as well for other, historically accurate uses of onstage tobacco?

This summer, Mollie Ringwald will come to ASU Gammage in “Sweet Charity.” There is a key scene in which Charity smokes a cigarette. The “cigarette” Ringwald “smokes” is actually a device that puffs non‑tobacco smoke but does not light. If our outraged antismoker from last week decides to see “Sweet Charity,” I hope he has by then learned to tell the difference between personal, ethical and health choices on the one hand, and art on the other.