You gotta love this.
Bars in Minnesota have found a dramatic way to get around the US state's recently introduced smoking ban.
The law grants an exception from the ban to performers in theatrical productions. So the bars have become theatres, and their customers, actors.
Now some bars print bills listing the "cast" of bartenders, and ashtrays become "props". Drinkers don costumes and attempt strange accents.
But a health official said it was time for the curtain to fall on the ploy.
'Before the Ban'
At the Rock, a heavy-metal bar in Maplewood, owner Brian Bauman explained why his clientele were doing little more than sitting around, smoking and drinking to a soundtrack of deafening music.
They're playing themselves before 1 October - you know, before there was a smoking ban," he said, according to the Associated Press.
"We call the production, Before the Ban!"