Firearm Safety Instructor
Dale is a certified Theatrical Firearm Safety Instructor (SAFD) with over 20 years of extensive professional and educational experience teaching and training actors and stunt performers in the safe and proper use of blank-fire weapons. He served on the committee that first developed training and certification with the Society of American Fight Directors and is one of only 30 instructors currently endorsed by the SAFD to teach theatrical firearm safety certification courses.
Along with the SAFD’s detailed training in proper nomenclature, legal regulations governing theatrical firearms, practical experience in maintenance, safe handling practices and procedures for theatre and film, coordination of theatrically effective and safe performance techniques, Dale also has practical firearms safety credentials from recognized organizations including National Rifle Association (NRA).
Working with performance appropriate blank-fire long-guns and handguns, he has safely coordinated firefights for feature films, stage plays, and stunt shows where the bang and boom of live-fire props were appropriate and needed. Credits include the shootout between DHS agents and killer robots in the feature film Eyeborgs, the excessively bloody gunfight in Signature Theatre’s Lieutenant of Inishmore, numerous firing squads for Tosca (Chautauqua Opera, Opera on the James, Central City Opera, Piedmont Opera, etc.), Wild West stunt shows for On Edge Productions, volleys of gunfire for the outdoor drama The Lost Colony, as well as other numerous gunshot wounds, murders and misses for theatres including Actors Theatre of Louisville, Arden Theatre Company, Denver Center Theatre Company, Studio Arena Theatre, Colorado Shakespeare Festival, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Pioneer Theatre, Meadowbrook Theatre, and the Arvada Center for the Arts. To date, Dale’s safety record is intact, with no blank-fire accidents or injuries.
