Welcome to Risk International Publishing!

Dr. Randall W. A. Davidson, a leading theater health and safety expert with
more than 50 years of experience worldwide, presents his new book...

Practical Health and Safety Guidelines
for School Theater Operations
Assessing the Risks in Middle, Junior and Senior High School
Theater Buildings and Programs

About the Book

This handbook presents a series of day-to-day risk management guidelines and is a must-read for parents, administrators, boards of directors, and personnel who oversee school performing arts programs. It is hands-on reference book, pointing out the hazards and risks to those individuals who, by law, are elected, hired, or appointed to operate school districts and their performing arts programs, in a healthy and safe environment.

This book identifies areas that most performing arts personnel and administrators might not think of as dangerous or hazardous, such as aging or outdated equipment or facilities. This handbook’s material may be startling to some, but the author's hope is that it will be a major wakeup call to all those who work in and administer school performing arts activities.

The purpose of the book is to motivate major re-thinking and necessary changes regarding health and safety practices in the performing arts at all educational levels. This volume provides readers with over 400 pages of pertinent health and safety information, pointing out hazardous conditions and recommended practices, and is a call to action to protect and save students and instructors in the performing arts, worldwide.

Through photos and text, this handbook presents information that every school administrator, health and safety officer, and theater instructor should have on how to run a safe, healthy, and secure school theater program. Right practices and wrong practices are pointed out. Every aspect of a school's theater program is addressed with an eye toward identifying the risks inherent for students and staff, and ways to manage / decrease / and ameliorate those risks. With chapters on fire prevention and suppression and the safe use of pyrotechnics, fog, chemicals, makeup, machinery in the classrooms and shops - and more - the author shares his vast knowledge and experience in the entertainment and school theater worlds. This book shows how to create the necessary safe conditions so that everyone can enjoy working in this vital area of education.

The Author

Dr. Randall W. A. Davidson is a leading expert in the field of health, safety and risk management. He has made hundreds of risk assessments of schools and public venues across the United States and is renowned for his health and safety workshops in the entertainment industry. His unstinting concern for the protection of workers, actors, and audiences in theater productions—and students in school theater programs—is legendary. He is a pre-eminent figure in the field of health, safety and risk management, and has clients around the globe in the fields of entertainment, health, safety, and government.

Who Needs This Book?

This handbook is written for anyone involved in operating or participating in a performing arts program. But the following professionals should also have this book: