Surveillance Camera Players

The group Surveillance Camera Players (SCP) was founded by Bill Brown, Susan Hull, and various other situationist-inspired activists in New York (USA) in November 1996 answering a call to «Guerilla Programming of Video Surveillance Equipment» by Michael Carter in 1995. The members of this media activist group manifest their opposition to the violation of protected rights to privacy by performing specially adapted plays directly in front of these cameras. The first work to be performed was Alfred Jarry’s «Ubu Roi». Later performances includes Orwell’s «1984« or Beckett’s «Waiting for Godot». Since then, the media activist group has given over 40 performances directly in front of surveillance cameras, mostly in New York City. But the group has also performed in other American cities, and there are now affiliate SCP groups in Tempe, Arizona and San Francisco (USA), Bologna (I), Stockholm (S) and in Lithuania (LT).
They mention, however, that surveillance camera theater was invented by a comedy writer who in 1981 wrote the «On the Job» episode of the American TV sit-com «Taxi», where two security guards—when no one (else) was looking—were passing their time by performing in front of the cameras.