SUN VALLEY : Play Aims to Snuff Out Kids’ Desire to Smoke

Fairy tales have come a long way, baby.

Cinderella’s evil stepsisters are not only mean and nasty, but they smoke cigarettes. Jack, formerly associated with a certain beanstalk, traded in his beloved bovine for a share of the tobacco industry.

These stories are told in the form of an anti-smoking and anti-tobacco play put on by members of the Valley Community Clinic for schoolchildren, to teach them the dangers of smoking and how to overcome peer pressure.

Loosely modeled after Stephen Sondheim’s musical “Into the Woods,” the play is called “Into the Smoke,” and was performed in front of the students at Fernangeles Elementary School in Sun Valley on Tuesday.

Intertwining the stories of Jack and Cinderella, the play touches on issues of peer pressure, nicotine addiction and self-esteem to give children the tools to make educated decisions about smoking later in life.

“If we can get them now to have enough information, then they won’t indulge (in smoking),” said Reasie Flagg, the director of the clinic’s Tobacco Education Project.

The play opens with Jack en route to the market to sell his cow when he is stopped by a sneaky tobacco dealer. The dealer pressures Jack into trading the cow in for tobacco seeds by telling him he’s a “mama’s boy” if he doesn’t agree.

Meanwhile, Cinderella’s--or rather Cindy’s--sisters, Bronchitis, Emphysema and Leukoplakia, have decided to start smoking and chewing tobacco to make them look beautiful and cool so they can win the attention of the bachelor prince.

“If we can get a cigarette, the prince would surely marry one of us,” they conclude. “We’re doing exactly what the billboards and magazine ads have been telling us to do!”

Jack’s tobacco seeds grow into an enormous stalk and Cindy’s sisters buy leaves from him. As Jack grows rich, he wonders why people keep coming back for more tobacco when a magic fairy godmother explains what nicotine addiction is.

Cindy starts to consider smoking too, when the same fairy godmother appears and tells her that smoking and chewing tobacco can cause cancer.

Eventually, the prince, who ends up being Jack in a bizarre twist of the plot, declares that he only wants a nonsmoker for a wife and chooses Cindy, and they start an anti-smoking organization together to educate the people around them.

At least one member of the audience got the message. Fred Figueroa, 8, said he will never smoke even if his friends try to pressure him into starting.

“I’ll just say, ‘I don’t smoke. It might kill you,’ ” Fred declared.