Module 3 — Risk Assessment in School Theatre · EasyStagecraft Suite Course

Why this is Module 3. Module 1 put you in the production manager's chair; Module 2 gave you the schedule that maps every task, who's on it, and when. Now we deal with the part of the job that can't be delegated and can't be winged: keeping people safe across every one of those scheduled tasks. Risk isn't the foundation everything else sits on — scheduling, compliance and budget are their own pillars — but it's the one where getting it wrong isn't an inconvenience, it's an injured student.

The framing. You aren't training to be a WHS officer. You're building enough safety literacy to defend your decisions to your principal, business manager and (if it ever comes to it) WorkSafe; to price-check a contractor's safety quote line by line; and — most importantly — to know when to stop the work.

The grey zone theatre lives in

Here's the thing almost no teacher knows walking in: theatre OHS sits in a genuinely confusing grey zone. We're not construction. We don't get the same scrutiny in the public eye. But when WorkSafe actually inspects a theatre or a job site, they reach for the exact same rulebook as construction — the same regulations, the same licensing.

What that means in practice: take a counterweight fly tower — the system that flies scenery and lighting bars in and out. Operating one is a multi-point lift, and to do it legally you need to be a licensed intermediate rigger. You don't just sit that exam either — you climb a ladder of licences to get there: first a licensed dogger (dogman), then a basic rigger, then intermediate, certified along the way in slinging loads, moving steel and multi-point lifts. Most teachers handed a show have no idea their venue contains work that, on paper, requires a licensed rigger — and that the school carries the liability if an unlicensed person does it.

That's why this matters — not because safety paperwork is fun, but because the work is dangerous in specific, mostly predictable ways, and because every year, somewhere in Australia, someone is injured or killed doing exactly the kind of work your students are about to do. (WorkSafe's published case studies include falls from fly grids, crushing from moving scenery, and electrocution from improperly earthed fixtures. Not theoretical.)

By the end of this module you'll be able to: identify the four risk categories specific to school theatre work, construct a defensible Risk Assessment Matrix entry for any task, decide when a Safe Work Method Statement is legally required and produce one quickly, read a contractor's quoted safety line items and challenge the over-spec'd ones with reference to standards, and walk through a real bump-in with the team and stop unsafe practice before it happens.

The goal is not zero risk. The goal is informed, accepted, controlled risk — documented so that if something does go wrong, your decisions can be defended, and so that the people doing the work knew what they were signing up for.

The four risk categories in school theatre

Almost every incident I've seen, near-missed, or read about in a coroner's report falls into one of four buckets. Train your eye on these and you'll start spotting hazards before they spot you.

1. Working at height

This is the biggest killer. Anything above 2 metres in Australia is "working at height" under WHS regulations, and that includes the average classroom ladder. In school theatre, working at height appears in: rigging lighting fixtures and audio equipment, focusing lights from an A-frame, climbing the fly grid, accessing the catwalk or bridge, using an EWP (elevating work platform — scissor lift, boom lift), painting backdrops on stretched cloth, replacing follow-spot bulbs.

The single most dangerous moment is the transition: stepping onto the ladder, stepping off the EWP basket, leaning out from the bridge to reach a fixture. People don't fall from height; they fall from the edge.

Two height hazards people routinely forget because they're not "up a ladder":

The live front edge of the stage. If the orchestra pit is down, the front of the stage becomes a drop into the auditorium or pit. That edge needs to be in your risk assessment — and depending on the height and the work happening near it, a safety net over the pit belongs in the RA.
Live-edge platforms, staging and set pieces. An apartment set sitting at 3m with an open, "live" edge where a cast member can step off is a fall hazard the same as a catwalk is. Best fixed in the set design — build handrails in. Where the design can't carry a rail (sightlines, the scene needs the open edge), it has to be controlled through risk assessment instead.

From the floor — why fall arrest + a rescue plan matter

I fell from a wire-rope ladder, 40 feet up, trying to get onto a truss. My fall arrest and harness are the only reason I'm writing this. And just as important: a rescue plan was already in place for every truss climb. Within two minutes there was a boom up to me and I was brought down — no drama, no improvising. That's the point. Fall arrest stops the fall; the rescue plan is what gets you back down. You need both, written and rehearsed, before anyone leaves the ground.

2. Manual handling

Less dramatic than falling, but the most common source of actual school-production injuries. Strained backs, crushed fingers, pulled shoulders. Causes: lifting a flat onto its bracing, sliding a set wagon across the stage, carrying a fly bar's worth of fabric, hauling a piano onto a riser, dragging cable spools across the dock door threshold.

Year 11 students built for cricket and rowing are not built for sustained two-handed overhead lifting of a heavy moving light at full extension on a stepladder. (A PAR can is a one-hand, ≤5kg lift — it's the moving lights that hurt people: they're heavy, awkward, and front-loaded.) Build the technique into your training, and never put two students on a job that needs three.

From the floor — the day I tore my bicep being a hero

Mid-show, in a scene change, I lifted a stage deck on stage from the wrong angle and the wrong position — trying to be a hero and get it done fast. I felt my right bicep rip clean off my elbow. A distal bicep rupture. It recoiled up into my armpit. Major surgery, six weeks in a cast, six months of rehab. I'd lifted heavier things a thousand times. What got me wasn't the weight — it was the angle, the position, and the rush. That's manual handling: it's rarely the load on its own, it's the load times how you're standing times the pressure you're under.

3. Electrical

Theatre power is high-amperage, three-phase, often retrofitted into buildings that weren't designed for it, and almost always handled by people who aren't electricians. Risks: shock from dodgy patching, fire from overloaded circuits, arc flash from re-patching a live distro, tripping circuit breakers mid-show because nobody added up the load.

Dimmer vs distro — know which is which before you patch

Dimmer = dimmable power, for anything with a globe (conventional fixtures you fade up and down). Distro = distributed power, for anything with a brain — moving lights, LED fixtures, fans, smoke machines, hazers, and so on. Plug a "brain" device into a dimmer channel and you can destroy it (or worse). The single most common rookie error in a school rig is patching intelligent fixtures through dimmable power.

Australian Standard AS/NZS 3760:2022 sets out in-service safety inspection and testing of electrical equipment in workplaces, and a school theatre is a workplace. Every PAR, every Source Four, every motorised fader bank, every iron, every kettle, every glue gun used backstage. Test intervals depend on the environment (AS/NZS 3760 Table 4): 6 months for the dynamic-use theatre environment (frequent re-rigging, plugging/unplugging, moved between productions) — and 12 months for fixed equipment in office or classroom-style spaces. A tag older than the relevant interval is no longer evidence of compliance with the standard, and in a court the absence of current testing is treated as the absence of "reasonably practicable" care.

4. Pyrotechnics, haze, smoke and special effects

The category most likely to get the school in legal trouble — but it splits into two very different tiers, and people lump them together to their cost.

Smoke and haze are fine — IF the venue's fire alarms are isolated. These are atmospheric effects, the machines are bought off the shelf, and they add real theatrical value. The whole game is alarm isolation: you talk to the building's facilities or venue manager and arrange for the smoke/heat detectors in the affected zone to be isolated for the performance window (and reinstated after). Skip that conversation and you get a fire-brigade callout — and in many councils a four-figure false-alarm invoice.

Pyro and open flame are a different animal. Any rated pyrotechnic device or flame effect needs a licensed operator on-site, plus the same smoke/alarm isolation, plus the local fire authority in the loop. This is not a "we'll be careful" effect — it's a licensed-person effect or it doesn't happen.

From the floor — how sensitive alarms really are (this week)

This is not theoretical and it's not even theatre. This week, the reverend turned on a brand-new blow heater in his office. The dust on it plus the normal first-run burn-off was enough to set off the alarm — and it triggered a full school evacuation. A blow heater. That's how little it takes. Now picture a haze machine running for a whole act with the detectors left live. Isolate the alarms, every time.

Stage cigarettes

If a scene calls for smoking, research the current law on smoking — and on representing smoking — on stage in your state; it changes and it's stricter than people assume. If it's permitted: run it under haze or smoke (alarms isolated) and get the principal to sign off on the optics as well as the safety. Otherwise: use fake / vapour / herbal or clove cigarettes — never real tobacco lit on stage.

Hazard vs risk — the difference that trips everyone up

People use these two words as if they mean the same thing. They don't, and getting them straight is the whole foundation of what follows.

A hazard is a thing that could cause harm. The ladder. The moving light up the bar. The live front edge of the stage. The haze machine. Hazards just sit there being capable of hurting someone.
A risk is the chance that the hazard actually hurts someone, and how badly. The same hazard can be high risk or low risk depending on what's going on around it. A ladder leaning unused against a wall is a hazard at almost zero risk. The same ladder, with a tired student standing on the top rung at the end of a 9-hour bump-in reaching sideways for a fixture, is the same hazard at very high risk.

How to spot a hazard: walk the space and ask "what here could hurt somebody — by falling, by being fallen from, by being lifted, by being plugged in wrong, by catching fire, by moving when someone's near it?" That's your hazard list. How to judge the risk: for each hazard ask "how likely is harm if we do nothing, and how bad would it be?" That's the next section.

The Risk Assessment Matrix

So what actually is a risk assessment? Stripped of the jargon, it's a short, written record where, for each hazard, you've (1) named the hazard, (2) judged how likely and how serious the harm is if nothing is done, (3) decided the controls you'll put in place, and (4) re-judged the risk after those controls to confirm it's now acceptable. That's it. A risk assessment is not a form you fill in to please someone — it's the visible thinking that lets you say "yes, we can run this safely, and here's exactly why." The matrix below is the tool that makes steps 2 and 4 consistent.

Every theatre task carries some inherent risk. The job of the matrix is to make that risk visible and decide whether it's acceptable, requires controls, or stops the task entirely.

The two axes are Likelihood (how often, if uncontrolled, would this go wrong?) and Consequence (if it did go wrong, how badly?). Multiply them and you get a Risk Score. Score determines whether the task proceeds, proceeds with controls, or is stopped.

	Consequence →
Likelihood ↓	1 Minor	2 First aid	3 Medical	4 Serious injury	5 Fatality
5 · Almost certain	5	10	15	20	25
4 · Likely	4	8	12	16	20
3 · Possible	3	6	9	12	15
2 · Unlikely	2	4	6	8	10
1 · Rare	1	2	3	4	5

How to read the matrix:

1-4 (green) — Acceptable. Proceed with standard supervision.
5-9 (yellow) — Tolerable. Proceed with documented controls.
10-14 (orange) — High. Requires SWMS, supervision by competent person, written sign-off.
15-19 (red) — Very high. Stop. Re-design the task. Bring in a licensed contractor if it cannot be eliminated.
20-25 (deep red) — Unacceptable. Do not proceed under any circumstances.

The mistake teachers most commonly make is treating Likelihood as if it's the chance the bad thing happens TODAY. It isn't. It's the chance it happens IF YOU DO NOTHING TO CONTROL IT. A student climbing an unbraced A-frame to focus a light is "Almost certain" to fall over the lifetime of the school's productions, not on this specific Tuesday. That's why the unmitigated score matters.

The hierarchy of controls (Model WHS Reg 36 / OHS Regs 2017 (VIC) r5.1.10–5.1.12) Once you've scored a hazard, apply controls in this order: 1. Eliminate (remove the hazard entirely — use a hoist instead of a ladder); 2. Substitute (use LED fixtures instead of incandescent, lower the heat hazard); 3. Isolate (separate people from the hazard — barricade the rig zone, use an EWP so the student isn't on the ladder); 4. Engineer (physical control of the risk — install a fall-arrest anchor); 5. Administer (procedures, training, signage); 6. PPE (helmets, gloves, harnesses). PPE is the LAST line of defence, not the first. Every "we'll just be careful" is an administrative control masquerading as a solution. Levels 1–4 are the "higher-order" controls; courts treat 5–6 as inadequate where a higher-order control is reasonably practicable.

Safe Work Method Statements (SWMS)

A SWMS is a written document that lists a high-risk task, the hazards it presents, and the step-by-step controls that the workers will follow. In Australia, a SWMS is legally required for any task classified as "high-risk construction work" — and theatre rigging, working at height over 2m, and electrical work all qualify.

For a school production, you almost certainly need a SWMS for: the bump-in, any focus session on a ladder or EWP, any work on the fly grid or catwalk, any rigging of audio or lighting, any moving of large scenic elements involving more than two people.

A good SWMS fits on two A4 pages and has these sections:

Task description — one or two sentences. "Rigging four moving heads on the LX2 bar from the bridge."
Date, location, persons involved — including their roles and any relevant tickets (Working at Heights, EWP, white card).
Equipment — what's being used. Specific. "Two safety harnesses, one 8m fall-arrest lanyard each, two carabiners (rated 22kN minimum), four lighting safeties."
Hazards identified — listed with risk matrix score.
Control measures — what specifically you'll do for each hazard. Sequential. "Step 1: brief team. Step 2: anchor harnesses to grid I-beam. Step 3: test fall-arrest by deliberate hang-test. Step 4: clear stage below."
Emergency procedure — what happens if it goes wrong. Who calls 000. Who fetches the AED. Where the emergency rope-bag is.
Sign-on — everyone working signs and dates. No signature, no work.

The sign-on test If you can't get every person on the task to read the SWMS and sign it, you have a SWMS that's too long, too dense, or too late. A SWMS handed out at 7:00am on bump-in day and signed without reading is worse than no SWMS at all — it gives the school a false sense of compliance while doing none of the protective work. Write SWMS during the production planning phase, not the morning of.

The contractor-quote BS detector

This is what separates a teacher who's been through Tier 1A from one who hasn't. When a production contractor (lighting hire, rigging contractor, scenic build company) sends a quote, you should be able to read every safety-related line item and decide whether it's:

Mandatory — required by AS/NZS standard or WHS regulation, must be in the quote
Reasonable — not strictly mandatory but justified by the specific risk profile, fair to charge for
Over-spec'd — built into the quote because they assume the school won't push back, can be challenged
Theatre of compliance — items that look like safety but don't actually control the relevant hazard (PPE-as-primary-control is the classic)

Worked example: a $9,400 "safety package" line item on a rigging quote

A typical contractor quote for rigging a 14-fixture LX bar might come with a "safety package" sub-total of $9,400. The trap is paying it whole because every line sounds like safety. Before you do, you need one fact about your own venue: are you actually working at height for this rig? If your bars fly to the ground for rigging and all access is catwalked and handrailed, much of the height premium below evaporates — they can't reasonably charge a height package for work that never leaves the ground. If you genuinely need a lifter, ladder or scaffold to reach the bar, the height lines become fair. Here's each line read with the matrix and hierarchy-of-controls in hand, and what's fair to pay vs what's over-spec'd:

Working at Heights ticket holder on-site, two operators × 8 hrs × $145/hr = $2,320 — fair ONLY if you're truly working at height. If the bars come to the deck and access is fully catwalked/handrailed, there's no height work — challenge the whole premium. If you need a lifter/ladder/scaffold to reach, it's mandatory; pay it.
Two EWP boom lifts × 1 day hire × $480 = $960 — EWP = Elevating Work Platform; the "M" in MEWP just means Mobile. Before accepting, ask: does it need to be an EWP at all? A scaffold tower or even a rated ladder may do the same job cheaper. And can the venue physically take it — will the stage/gym/sprung floor carry an EWP's point loads (a gym floor often can't), and how do you even get it through the doors and into the space? If an EWP is genuinely the right tool, one boom on a slower schedule may save you $480. The decision is yours.
Fall arrest kits × 2 × $185 = $370 — easily questioned. Booms come with harnesses, so where is a separate kit actually used? A separate fall-arrest kit only earns its place at a specific lighting or access position where you clip to an anchor point — and those anchors must be installed by a licensed rigger. Most real theatres already have arresters installed above their ladders and access positions, so a charge for kits (and certainly for installing anchors) is questionable unless they can name the exact position it's for. Ask: "which position needs this, and is there already an installed anchor there?"
"Spotter" × 1 × 8 hrs × $95/hr = $760 — over-spec'd as a paid contractor line. A spotter can be a venue tech or staff member you already have on site — free. Only worth a paid line if rigging happens live over the audience seating and you have nobody else. Challenge: "we'll use our own tech as spotter and barricade the seating — is your paid spotter still required?"
"Pre-rig site inspection" × $1,400 fixed fee — over-spec'd; this is their cost, not yours. If they need to come and look at the venue, that's part of winning the contract — a contractor inspects the site to price the job. You don't pay a supplier to come and see whether they want your work. Ask for it removed.
"Safety supervisor" × 8 hrs × $135/hr = $1,080 — over-spec'd. Day-to-day supervision of the space is provided by the venue, not bought from the contractor. The only version of this that's fair is if a named licensed person is taking documented responsibility for their high-risk work — ask exactly what their function is, and whether it just duplicates the ticket-holder you're already paying.
"Compliance documentation / SWMS" × $850 fixed — should be $0 to you. A contractor providing a SWMS for their own work is doing their basic legal duty — that's their cost of doing business, not a line item on your quote. Ask for it supplied at no charge.
"Theatre helmets" × 6 × $45 = $270 — over-spec'd as a hire/markup. Helmets are either supplied if you ask, or you price them yourself — a hard hat from Bunnings is well under $45. Standard hats from your own stock are fine unless rigging is happening directly overhead of working personnel.

Original quote: $9,400. Defensible after challenge: roughly A$2,320–$3,280 (the genuine, height-justified mandatories — ticket-holder and, if truly needed, the EWP hire), with the inspection, supervisor, documentation and spotter lines removed and the fall-arrest/helmet lines challenged down. If you're not working at height at all, it's lower again. That's not aggressive negotiation — it's reading each line and asking "what hazard does this control, who should really bear the cost, and is it the most reasonably practicable option?"

Multiply this across a full production budget and the course pays for itself many times over in a single show.

The skill isn't to refuse safety spend. It's to refuse theatre while paying generously for genuine controls. The contractor who quotes correctly — every line tied to a specific hazard with a specific control rationale — is the contractor you want to work with for the next five years. The contractor who flinches when you ask "what hazard does this control?" is the one who was banking on you not knowing the difference.

Sign-on protocols and the daily safety brief

Every production day with high-risk work happening should start with a 5-minute safety brief at the rehearsal stage door. It's worth more than every clipboard you've ever filled in.

The brief has four parts: (1) what's happening today and where, (2) any specific hazards new since yesterday, (3) the emergency procedure refresher, (4) any "stop-the-clock" issues anyone wants raised. That last one is crucial — the message you're sending is that ANY student or staff member can pause the day for safety reasons without retaliation. If they can't, your safety culture is performative.

A digital sign-on (e.g. EasyRisk's QR-code daily check-in) gives you the auditable record without the clipboard problem. Phones come out anyway; might as well make them useful.

Worked example — A high school musical bump-in

Imagine you're loading in Les Misérables for a 4-night season. The bump-in is a Saturday + Sunday. Your crew: 12 students Years 9-12, three parent volunteers, one casual lighting tech (paid, has a Working at Heights ticket), you, and the director.

Here's the risk-assessment thinking, hazard by hazard.

Three hazards, scored and controlled the same way you'd lay them out in a real risk assessment:

Hazard	Likelihood	Consequence	Unmitigated score	Controls (with hierarchy level)	Residual score
A — Rigging 8 LED PARs from the LX1 bar at 6m	4 · Likely	5 · Fatality (a dropped PAR is 4kg of metal falling 6m)	20 — Very high. Cannot proceed without controls.	Lighting tech rigs all fixtures personally from EWP (Isolate — separates the student from the height hazard); students hand fixtures up from the deck with safety lanyards already clipped (Engineer); LX1 bar dead-locked at trim height + one secondary safety chain per fixture (Engineer); area below LX1 cleared with cones during rig (Administer); helmets mandatory in the rig zone (PPE).	4 — Tolerable. Proceed.
B — Building the barricade scenery	3 · Possible	4 · Serious injury (saw kickback, falling timber, eye injury)	12 — High. Requires SWMS.	Only Year 11/12 students with prior workshop training run power tools (Administer); teacher or qualified parent supervises the cut-list station (Administer); safety glasses + closed-toe shoes mandatory (PPE); table-saw riving knife + crown guard checked at start of each session (Engineer); max two power-tool stations active at once (Engineer); first-aid kit at workshop door + a volunteer with current HLTAID011 on duty (Administer).	4 — Tolerable. Proceed with SWMS signed by everyone in the workshop.
C — Pyro flash for the gunshot in Act 1	2 · Unlikely (device is well-engineered, but misfire is catastrophic)	5 · Fatality (burns, hearing damage, fire spreading to costumes)	10 — High.	Pyro replaced with a digital sound effect synced to a high-intensity strobe on the lighting console. Hazard eliminated (Eliminate).	0 — hazard removed.

Hazard C is the most important lesson in the whole module. The best control is removal. Audiences will not notice a pyro flash that wasn't there. They will notice — and so will your career — if one goes wrong.

The "production reality" filter Every effect a creative team proposes should pass three tests: Does the story actually need it? · Can a safer alternative achieve the same emotional beat? · Are we equipped to run it for the full run, not just dress? If any test fails, the answer is no, regardless of how cool the effect looked at rehearsal.

The EasyRisk widget

This module includes access to the EasyRisk interactive widget — a templated builder that generates SWMS, daily sign-on QR codes, and an audit trail keyed to your production. Open EasyRisk in a new tab. You'll work through a hands-on exercise using a fictitious school production scenario and produce a real SWMS at the end.

The widget is built specifically for the Australian school theatre context — it includes WorkSafe Vic / NSW / QLD references inline, an editable hazard library pre-populated with the most common school-theatre tasks, a 5×5 risk matrix, sign-on QR codes, and a one-click PDF export formatted for the Drama HOD's approval signature.

Build the SWMS, don't just read about it. Everything in this module — the hazard list, the matrix scoring, the SWMS, the sign-on — comes together in EasyRisk: a templated SWMS builder, a pre-populated hazard library, the 5×5 risk matrix, and sign-on QR codes, all keyed to your production with a clean PDF export.

Open EasyRisk →

Exercise 3.1 — Build a SWMS

Open the EasyRisk widget and produce a SWMS for the following scenario:

"Your school is running a senior drama showcase. The set includes a 2.4m × 1.8m revolving platform built by your students from MDF and timber, driven manually by two backstage crew. The platform moves twice per show. Rehearsals start in two weeks."

Your SWMS should identify at least four hazards (mechanical, manual handling, electrical, struck-by), score each, and document at least three controls per hazard. Save your PDF to the course portfolio.

Sample SWMS provided in the resource pack — but try yours first. The contrast is the lesson.

Exercise 3.2 — Challenge a real quote

If you have a current contractor quote for a school production (rigging, lighting hire, scenic build, anything), open it now and apply the BS-detector framework to each safety-related line item. Categorise each as: mandatory / reasonable / over-spec'd / theatre of compliance.

Don't have a quote on hand? Use the sample quote in the resource pack (a real anonymised quote from a 2025 Melbourne production).

Your output: a single A4 page with three columns — "line item / category / what you'd say to the contractor". Save to portfolio.

Knowledge check

These are reflection prompts, not a graded quiz. Your answers save automatically in this browser so you can come back to them — they are not submitted or marked.

1. An A-frame ladder will be used to focus four lights from 2.3m height during dress week. What is the minimum legal classification of this work in Australia?

2. A student volunteers to help with rigging. They have done it in two previous shows. Is that sufficient evidence of competence to justify them working at the fly grid? Explain.

3. List the six levels of the hierarchy of controls in order (Model WHS Reg 36). Why does PPE come last, and what makes it weaker than the higher-order controls?

4. A SWMS is on the wall but only the lighting tech has read it. Bump-in is in 15 minutes. What do you do?

5. The director wants a 1.5m fire-bar effect for the act-2 climax. Walk through the decision tree you would apply.

6. A contractor's quote lists "compliance documentation: $850". What three questions should you ask before paying it?

Resources

EasyRisk already gives you the SWMS builder, the pre-populated hazard library, the 5×5 risk matrix and the sign-on QR — so this pack deliberately doesn't duplicate those. What's below is the genuine extras: the off-tool templates and reference sheets that sit alongside EasyRisk. Open each in a new tab, print or save as PDF.

Resource	What it's for
Daily Safety Brief Template	The 5-minute pre-day brief, written to read verbatim at the stage door — what's on today, new hazards, emergency refresher, "stop-the-clock" invitation.
EWP / Scaffold Pre-Use Checklist	A4 laminate-and-keep pre-start check for an elevating work platform or scaffold tower before anyone goes up.
Production Approval Pack Checklist	Assembly-ready document for your principal / business manager to sign off the production's overall risk profile.
Quote BS-Detector Template	A4 cheat sheet for the contractor-quote framework — the four categories (mandatory / reasonable / over-spec'd / theatre of compliance) with prompts to challenge each line.
Annotated Sample Lighting Quote	A real anonymised quote with line-by-line teacher annotations — the worked example from this module to use against your own quotes.
Stop / Make-Safe / Proceed Decision Tree	A one-page "when to stop work" flow for stage managers and student crew — the in-the-moment call, distinct from the scoring matrix.
WorkSafe Reference Card	State-by-state regulator references and the key standards (AS/NZS 3760, hierarchy of controls), current as of 2026.
Smoking & Cigarettes on Stage — Australia	State-by-state rules: real tobacco vs herbal/clove/prop, performance exemptions, the Act + regulator for each state/territory, plus the school-grounds layer. Accurate June 2026 — verify before relying (not legal advice).

The CPD claim This module counts toward 1.5 hours of accredited Continuing Professional Development under VIT / NESA / QCT / WACOT registration frameworks. Your CPD certificate is auto-generated on module completion (provided you complete the quiz with ≥70% and submit Exercises 3.1 + 3.2). Certificate PDF download lands in v1.1 (mid-2026); for now the completion is recorded on your account.

Next module: Tier 1A · Module 4 — The School-Theatre Compliance Stack. The seven compliance categories, licensing and insurance, image release, child safety, audit prep — and reading a contractor's "compliance documentation" line without overpaying. It builds directly on the risk register you've just completed.

This module was authored by Daniel Gosling for the EasyStagecraft Suite Course (Tier 1A). Last updated 2026-05-15. Content is licensed for use only by registered course participants and their teaching contexts — not for redistribution.

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