Plays of the Ages

Privacy

What we collect, why we collect it, who else touches it, and how to get it back or have it deleted.

Last updated 27 August 2026 · Plays of the Ages is run by 69 Kittredge. Questions go to ongoings@playsoftheages.com.

What we hold, and only when

If you are just looking

Nothing that identifies you. We count your visit on our own server, using a number derived from your address that is deliberately useless tomorrow — see Counting visits below for exactly how. There is no third-party analytics service, no advertising network and no cross-site tracker. Our host keeps ordinary server logs — the kind every web server keeps — and we do not build profiles from them. Our typefaces are served by Google Fonts, so Google sees the IP address your browser asks from; nothing else on this page comes from anyone but us.

If you sign up for the letter

• Your email address and which page you signed up from. Nothing else. Every letter has an unsubscribe link, and unsubscribing means we stop, not that we keep you on a list marked "stopped".

If you RSVP to listen to a reading

• Your email address and which reading you said yes to. You get one reminder before that reading. It does not put you on the letter — those are separate on purpose.

If you suggest a work, or adopt a scan

• What you typed — the title, author, translator, source, and any note.
• Your name and email, if you gave them, so we can tell you what happened.

If you make an account

• Your email address, held by our authentication provider. We sign you in with a link rather than a password, so there is no password to store or lose.
• A display name, and anything else you choose to add — a picture, a line about yourself, a city, a country, a timezone. All optional. The timezone is used to show you reading times in your own clock.
• Which parts you claimed, and in which readings.

If you become a member

• Your card details never reach us. Stripe handles the payment and holds the card. We store the identifiers Stripe gives us, whether the membership is active, and when the current period ends — enough to know whether you have a seat.

If you are in a reading

• Your voice and, if you turn it on, your picture, live, for the length of the reading. Cameras start off. You choose whether to turn one on.
• Whether you were there, and your two answers about recording — the archive and short clips are asked separately — kept per person and per reading rather than once and forever.
• Whether your microphone is active right now, as a single yes or no, for as long as the line you are on. Your own browser works this out from how loud your microphone is, on your own machine. What the other people in the room receive is the yes or no, so that the script on their screen can follow along. It is not written down anywhere and it is gone when the line moves on.

Recordings

A reading is only ever recorded when two separate things are true: the rights on the play allow it, and the room consents. Rights come first and are not a preference anyone can override — a play we are reading under a licence that forbids recording cannot be recorded, whatever the room wants.

Consent is asked at the door, in plain words, not buried in a setting — and it is two questions, not one. Keeping your voice in the archive, so someone who could not be there can listen later, is a different thing from your voice appearing in a short clip on the internet; saying yes to one is not saying yes to the other. Both start unticked, either can be changed on the night, and both are recorded against you and that reading alone. Agreeing once does not agree for next month.

If you say no, nothing about your evening changes. You are in the room, you read your part, and your voice is simply left out of what is kept.

If a recording exists that you are in and you would rather it did not, email us and we will take it down. You do not have to explain yourself, and we will not ask the others first.

Who else touches it

We use other companies to run this. Each of them sees only what their part of the job needs.

• Supabase — the database and sign-in. Holds everything described above except payments and video.
• Netlify — serves the website and runs the small server functions behind it.
• Daily — carries the live video and audio of a reading, and stores a recording when one is made.
• Stripe — takes the payment. Holds your card; we never see it.
• Resend — delivers our email. Sees the address it is delivering to.
• ElevenLabs — makes the voices that read the parts nobody claimed. It is sent the words of the play and nothing else. It never receives anyone's voice, and it is not involved while a reading is happening: the audio is made in advance and played from our own storage.

What we never do

• We do not sell your information. Not to anyone, not in any form.
• We do not run advertising, and nobody pays us to put anything in front of you.
• We do not track you across other websites. There is no pixel, no fingerprinting, no advertising cookie.
• Nothing said in a reading is sent anywhere to be listened to by a machine. There is no transcription, no captioning, no speech recognition and no keyword spotting — not switched off, not there. The script on screen moves along because each browser watches the loudness of its own microphone and publishes one bit: speaking, or not speaking. That bit is the only thing in the whole system derived from the sound of anyone's voice, and no transcript of a reading exists to be stored.
• We do not read your script if you upload one. A play you upload as its author stays yours; reading it here grants nothing to anyone who reads in it, and you can withdraw it at any time.

Cookies

One kind only: the token that keeps you signed in, stored by your own browser. It does nothing else and it is not shared. There is no consent banner here because we set nothing that would need one — no advertising cookie, no tracking cookie, no cross-site identifier.

Counting visits

We do count. We want to know which plays people open, where the sign-up goes wrong, and whether anyone reaches the door and turns back — and we would rather tell you exactly how than claim we don't look.

When you load a page, our own server records the page, roughly how long it was open, and coarse facts about your browser: mobile or desktop, Chrome or Safari, the site that linked you here. No third party is involved and nothing is sent anywhere else.

To tell one visitor from ten, we need something to count. Your IP address is combined with your browser's description and with a secret that changes every midnight, run through a one-way hash, and the address itself is discarded — never written down. Within a single day the same person makes the same number, so we can tell forty visits by one reader from one visit by forty. Tomorrow you make a different number, and yesterday's cannot be matched to it by us, or by anyone who takes a copy of our database, because the secret that made it is gone.

That is the trade, and it cuts both ways honestly: we can see one day clearly, and we cannot follow anyone across two. If your browser sends "Do Not Track" or a Global Privacy Control signal, we record nothing at all.

If you have an account, what you did while signed in — the parts you claimed, the readings you opened — is part of your account and we can see it as such. That is a membership record, and closing your account removes it.

How long we keep things

• Letter and reminder addresses — until you unsubscribe or ask us to remove them.
• Your account — until you close it.
• Payment records — as long as tax and accounting rules require, which is longer than we would otherwise keep them.
• Recordings — until you or another reader in them asks for removal.
• Visit counts — individual page records for 90 days, then reduced to daily totals with no visitor number in them at all.
• Feedback you send us — until we've acted on it. If you leave an email address it is only so we can reply.

Getting your information, or getting rid of it

Email ongoings@playsoftheages.com and ask. You can ask for a copy of what we hold about you, ask us to correct something, or ask us to delete it. We will do it, and we will not make you explain why or send you through a form designed to change your mind.

Deleting your account removes your profile and disconnects you from the parts you read. Where a recording still exists that other people are also in, we take you out of it or remove it, depending on what is possible.

Where this operates

Plays of the Ages is run from the United States and is currently open to people in the United States. Our service providers are US-based and your information is processed there.

Age

You need to be 13 or older to make an account here. If you are under 18, please have a parent or guardian look at this page with you before you take a part. Some of the plays we read are emphatically for grown-ups — the season opens with an unexpurgated Lysistrata — and where a play needs a note about its content we put that note on the play's own page. Read the page before you take a part in it.

If this page changes

We will change the date at the top and, if the change actually affects you, say so in the letter rather than hoping you notice.