Surveillance Camera Players

The Surveillance Camera Players performing in Times Square (New York City), circa 2001

The Surveillance Camera Players are not a professional theater troupe, nor are they producers of or actors in television shows; they are just a bunch of average Joes and Josephines who appreciate how boring it must be for law enforcement officers to watch the video images constantly being displayed on the closed-circuit television surveillance systems that perpetually monitor our behavior and appearances all over the city. The only time the officers have any fun watching these monitors is when something illegal is going on. But the crime rate is down and the subways – the metro transportation systems – (which are filled with surveillance cameras) are the safest they have been in thirty years. Thus, for untold numbers of police surveillants, there is less and less to watch – less and less to watch out for – every day. And so we have both an opportunity and a problem here. The opportunity is to get those law enforcement officers watching something on TV that isn’t all sex and violence; and the problem is that a bored surveillant is an inattentive surveillant, and an inattentive surveillant is a waste of space, time, and money.