One Sunday a month a script is opened — Athens, Edo, Lagos, Oslo — and strangers who have never met take the parts and speak them. No rehearsal. No set. No audition. Just voices around a fire that happens to be made of glass and light.
Listening is free, always. Your first part is free too.
Nothing is performed here.
Something is only ever opened.
Browse Sunday's cast list and take an open part. Long roles split between up to three readers, so nobody carries a play alone — and a first-timer can take forty lines instead of four hundred.
Fifteen minutes before the hour, a door appears in your alcove. Click it. No host to wait for, no link to hunt down, no one standing at the gate with a clipboard.
Empty roles and every stage direction are read by a synthetic voice, chosen per character. A play with four people in the room still sounds like a play.
The library opens with what we could source and prepare — Greek, Sanskrit, Noh, Restoration, Ibsen, Chekhov, the Harlem Renaissance. Plays still under copyright are listed too, marked and locked. When enough of the circle wants one, we go and ask for it.
A letter before each reading — the play, the parts still open, and what the circle is asking permission to read next. No account needed.
Free forever. Leave whenever. We never sell it.Open plays can be scheduled for any Sunday. Locked plays need permission from whoever holds them — open one to see what it would take.
Suggest anything. A play in the public domain only needs enough of us to want it and a Sunday to put it on. A play still under copyright needs a licence, which means writing to whoever holds the rights and asking.
Membership money goes two places: the video rooms, and a licensing fund. When enough of the circle wants a play we can't yet read, we write and ask, and the fund pays the fee if there is one. Nobody is asked for extra money. If a rights holder says no, that goes on this page too — the refusals are part of the record, not something to hide.
Year One is entirely public domain, so nothing here is waiting on anyone's permission yet. This is where that changes.
You don't have an alcove yet. Take a part in a reading and this becomes yours — your script, your door, your lines marked the way you like them.
What the script looks like in the room · a demonstration
The script scrolls in time with the room. Your lines glow. When the marker reaches an unclaimed part, the synthetic voice speaks it — no one has to cue anything.
Nothing yet. Your first part is free — every reading holds a seat back for someone who has never spoken here.
Nothing archived yet — the first reading is still ahead of us.
Public domain readings only, and only when the room agrees. Licensed readings are never recorded — the licence forbids it, and so do we.
Pick a play, pick an hour, and the room builds itself. Invite whoever you like, or leave the door open and let the circle find you.
This is how it will work, and the form below is the real one — but readings you run yourself open after the first season, once there is a circle to invite. Until then the twelve nights are ours together. Have a look at the form; it will be here when it works.
Public domain works, or something you wrote yourself.
Under the minimum, the reading still happens — it just shows how many more voices it's hoping for, and goes out in the letter.
Share it however you like. We don't send bulk invitations on your behalf — that's how a platform's email ends up in everyone's spam folder.
The play is the middle. The rest is why people come back.
Plays while people gather and during intermission — never inside the recording.
When it does: you'll host it, you can mute or remove anyone, and nobody can share a screen — including you.
The reading happens here, on the page — not in another app. Nothing below has happened yet: it is a walkthrough of the four states a night moves through, with stand-in names. Click through them.
Elizabethan lute airs, playing while everyone arrives. We begin when six of you have marked yourselves present.
4 of 6 present
Marking yourself present also consents to the play being recorded. The gathering, the intermission and the talkback are never recorded.
Begins when the play does. Stops when it ends.
The mic follows the script. When the marker reaches your line it unmutes you; when it passes, it hands the mic on. Nobody is policing anyone — you can always press to speak. It just means no one talks over the play by accident.
Public domain — this one goes to the archive. Everyone here gets it in their alcove.
Chat only. No screen sharing, for anyone.
The lute comes back. Recording is paused — nothing said now is kept. Get water. Stretch. Act III opens at the top of the hour.
Intermissions never make the archive — and neither does the music, which keeps the recording clean.
The play is finished and the recording has stopped. Half an hour to talk about what just happened, with whoever wants to stay.
This is where people
actually meet each other.
5 stayed
The talkback is never recorded. People say truer things when nothing is being kept.
You were here, so it's yours. People who weren't can't see it — unless it's a Sunday reading, which everyone can watch.
Listening never costs anything and never will — and neither does your first time reading. Every reading holds a seat back for someone who's never spoken here before. After that, $24 a year keeps your seat and helps buy the licences for plays we can't yet read.
The fire is free.
The seat around it is twenty-four dollars.