Securing your gear

[PSMKay]

This crossed my mind today and I'm amazed we've not discussed it before.  Many of you work in shared environments - whether it be a performance space shared by multiple groups or a rehearsal space adjoining a scene shop - there are people that come into your space on a regular basis.  With increasingly expensive tools (laptops, kits, prompt books) and sensitive documents like health release forms and rehearsal reports, I'm sure many of you have pretty extensive security plans in place for keeping stuff from walking away.

How do you protect your gear?  What do you do to keep the prompt book safe but accessible in case of traumatic bus encounters?  How about your laptop?  Do you use any means to secure or encrypt your data?  (Specific software is OK, just no operating system grandstanding please.)  What lengths do you go to in protecting the private information of your cast and crew?

[Mac Calder]

Most of the venues I have worked at have had lockers of some description on site. What I usually do is provide my own padlock, and I have 4 keys for it. One I keep on me, one at my house, one I give to my ASM and one I leave in a sealed envelope attached to the bottom of my desk. Most modern envelopes have the tamper-tears in them which will rip when you try to open the envelope, so it is the poor mans equivalent of a "Break glass for key" box. Prompt book, contact book and production notes book all live in there. In case of emergency, the ASM has a key, and in cases where the ASM is also un-available, a phone call to me will reveal the location of the key under my desk...

Now that I have an office job, I use the same principal - I have a spare key to the employee filing cabinet in the top drawer of my desk, and I lock my desk each night, and I have a spare desk drawer key taped in an out of the way location that would be difficult to guess. It is security through obscurity - a determined person could open the cabinet, but it is too much effort for someone to search just to have a quick snoop.

[missliz]

I'm lucky that the theater I'm in now has a rehearsal closet- only 2 people have keys (myself and the production manager), so it's used to store show props, any expensive costume pieces, and all my SM stuff. As for my prompt book, I keep it in the booth, which is also locked with a key only available to a few people in the building. A spare set of keys is kept at the office, so if something were to happen to me, they could still have access to all my stuff.

[loebtmc]

During a run I leave my calling script at the theater (taking it home Sun nite and returning w it for the next show, whatever day that is). The rest - laptop, tools etc - go home with me nightly.

[Tempest]

The theatre I work at, most, does not have a secure space for transient (SM/ASM/designers) personel to store belonings or paperwork.  I've asked for something, a locking filing cabinet, a drawer backstage, anything, several times, but as of yet, my requests have not been honored.  (Also, the "valuables cabinet" is only 4" deep and a joke.) 
There is a limited number of people who have keys to the booth, so a lot of the time, I'll put my stuff there, if I absolutely have to leave it.  However, it's such a pain to transfer books, kit, laptop, laptop bag, sound computer, etc. up to the booth, most of the time I end up staying in the theatre over breaks, to guard stuff, instead of going out.  It sort of galls me, but, there it is.  I've resorted, more than once, to shoving my valuables under a seat in an out of the way section of the house, and praying.
Once we're into tech, the prompt book stays at the theatre.  It lives on the tech table so designers can refer to it when I'm not present, and then lives in the booth the duration of the run.  The booth is pretty secure, but it's such a mess and so overcrowded with other stuff that storing anything much more than the prompt script isn't an option.
I do keep all paperwork (contact sheets, reports, health forms, etc.) in a separate book than the script, which stays with me.  I've never really felt that there was a security issue with this arrangement.