The Straz Six

Signing in

Put in your mobile number and you're in. No password to remember, and no code to look up in a text thread.

Your phone stays signed in after that, so the next time you open the page it goes straight to the season. Tap Sign out in the top corner if you're on someone else's phone.

If your number isn't recognised, Kevin needs to add it under Users. Numbers match on the last ten digits, so it doesn't matter how you type it.

Put it on your phone

This works best as an icon on your home screen — one tap, already signed in, no hunting through a text thread for the link.

iPhone · Safari

1. Open the link Kevin sent you in Safari (not Chrome — only Safari can add to the home screen on iPhone).
2. Tap the Share button — the square with the arrow coming out of it, at the bottom of the screen.
3. Scroll the list and tap Add to Home Screen.
4. Name it Straz Six and tap Add.

Android · Chrome

1. Open the link in Chrome.
2. Tap the ⋮ menu at the top right.
3. Tap Add to Home screen, then Add.

Do it on the phone you actually carry — the sign-in is remembered per device, so adding it on an iPad means signing in there too.

The six seats

Six seats in Morsani Hall, in three pairs:

• Seats 1 & 2 — Kevin
• Seats 3 & 4 — George & KT
• Seats 5 & 6 — Stephanie

George and KT both sign in with their own numbers and share the same pair, so either of you can fill them in.

On every event you'll see all six seats at a glance, and how solid each one is:

• Solid — confirmed. That person has said yes.
• Half-tone — a name is on the seat but it isn't settled: still to be invited, waiting on a reply, or a maybe.
• Dashed green — going spare, offered to the group.
• Faint dotted — nobody's answer yet.

So a row of solid squares means the night is genuinely full, not just pencilled in.

A seat taken by one of the four of you carries their initial — K for Kevin, KT, G for George, S for Stephanie. KT gets both her letters, since a lone K next to Kevin's would tell you nothing. A blank square with a colour is a guest; hover it for their name.

The next night up carries a purple banner — on its row and on the night itself — counting how many of the six are empty or unconfirmed. That's the same rule as the squares: only a confirmed guest stops a seat being counted, so a seat with someone pencilled in but not yet confirmed still shows up in the warning. When every seat is confirmed it flips to All six confirmed.

Answering for a night

The strip at the very top is the three pairs in the same order and with the same labels as the seats on every row below — Mine first, then the other two. Each shows how many of the nine nights that pair has settled.

A night counts as settled once there's nothing left for you to decide: both your seats have a name or an offer on them, or you've said you're sitting this one out. Anything else still needs you, which is what the count beside it means.

Open a night and you get three buttons at the top of your own panel:

• We're going — then put a name on each of your two seats.
• Sitting this one out — you're in town but skipping it.
• Out of town — the others can see you're away, not just quiet.

Either of the last two offers you the chance to hand both seats to the group in one tap. You don't have to: sitting out and keeping your seats empty is allowed, it just shows up as two empty seats so everyone can see it.

Into your calendar

The moment you take one of your seats, the night asks whether you want it in your calendar. Pick Google Calendar or Outlook and a pre-filled event opens — the show, the 7:30 curtain, Morsani Hall with the full address, and a link back here. One tap to save it.

Say Not now and it won't ask again for that night. You can still add it any time from the links beside the show page at the top.

If you come off the seat

The night will remind you that it's still sitting in your calendar and needs deleting there. It can't remove it for you. Adding an event hands it to your calendar and the connection ends there — nothing here can reach back into it.

Tap Done once you've tidied it up and the reminder goes away.

Naming your guests

Type a name straight onto a seat. It saves as you go, so there's nothing to submit.

Names you've used before come up as you type — handy when the same friends keep coming.

Everyone in the group sees the names, which is the point: it's how you know who you're sitting with on the night. They also see how far along each invitation is — see Invitations and tickets.

Invitations and tickets

Every name you put on a seat carries a status. Set it from the pill beside them:

• To be invited — you've pencilled them in but haven't asked yet. Where every name starts.
• Awaiting reply — you've asked, they haven't answered.
• Maybe — they're interested but won't commit.
• Confirmed — they're coming. Only this fills the square in solid.
• Declined — they can't make it.

Next to the status is a ticket icon. Tap it once you've actually sent that person their ticket, and it turns green. It's the thing everyone forgets on the day, and the others can see it too.

Mark someone Declined and the seat offers to file them away and free itself, so you don't have to clear it by hand.

Stand-by and turned down

Your own panel has three tabs: Seats, Alternates and Declined.

Alternates

The people you'd ring first if a seat comes free. Add as many as you like — they aren't on a seat and don't count against your two.

They carry a status and a ticket icon of their own, so you can sound someone out before a seat exists. When one does, tap Into seat 3 (or whichever is free) and they move across, status and all.

Declined

A record of who turned this one down, and when. It saves asking the same person twice, and saves wondering whether you ever asked at all.

If they change their mind, Back to stand-by puts them in the alternates list.

The guest book

Tap Guest book at the top to keep proper records of the people you bring — company, mobile, email and a note for whatever's worth remembering.

It's shared between the four of you, on purpose. If Stephanie already has a number for someone, nobody has to go hunting for it again. Each entry shows who added it.

The list is grouped by whose guests they are — Kevin, George & KT, Stephanie — with the season ticket holders at the top of their own group and everyone they bring listed alphabetically underneath. Anyone with no pair set yet collects at the bottom under Not said whose guest; set it with Guest of in their details and they move up.

Searching keeps the grouping and simply drops the groups with no match.

Nights come for free

Open a name and you'll see every night that person has a seat on, which pair it came from, and the seat number. You never type that — it's read straight off the seats, so it can't go stale.

Tap any of those nights to jump to it.

The four of you

Kevin, George, KT and Stephanie are in the book from the start, badged Season ticket and tied to their own pair. You never have to add yourselves, and you can't be removed — though you can still fill in a mobile, an email or a note like anyone else.

Each seat that belongs to one of you has a one-tap button. It fills the name in and marks them confirmed, so taking your own seat never means typing or searching for your own name.

• Kevin — seat 1 is his, seat 2 is for a guest.
• George & KT — seat 3 is KT's and seat 4 is George's, so the pair reads It's KT then It's George.
• Stephanie — seat 5 is hers, seat 6 is for a guest.

Your own seat says It's me; the other one in your pair says their name. The button disappears once that person is in a seat, so nobody ends up on two at once — clear the seat and it comes back. The same shortcut sits in the claim and request boxes when you're taking a seat from another pair.

If the same name does end up on two seats some other way, the night says so at the top rather than letting it slide.

Which of the two seats belongs to whom is set under Users — each person shows their seat number, and ↑ First seat swaps them.

People file themselves

You don't have to remember to add anyone. Put a name on a seat, claim a seat for someone, ask for one, or add a stand-by — and they go into the guest book on their own.

Half-typed names don't leave a trail. Pause after "Bob" and carry on to "Bob Whitfield" and the entry grows into the finished name instead of leaving a stray "Bob" behind. That only ever happens to a row the app filed itself moments earlier that nobody has added anything to — an established guest with a note or a number is never touched, so Ana and Ana Ruiz stay two different people.

If you'd rather not keep a record of someone, untick Save new names to the guest book under your seats before you type them in. That choice sticks on your phone until you change it back, and it only affects new names — nothing already in the book is touched.

With it off, a small book icon appears beside any unfiled name so you can add them later with one tap. You can also use Add someone in the book itself.

Names in the book come up as suggestions when you type on a seat, so the spelling stays consistent and their history stays attached to one entry.

Looking someone up mid-night

Anyone on a seat carries a small contact card icon. Tap it and you go straight to their entry — number, email, notes, and every night they've sat with us — without hunting through the book.

It works on anyone's seats, not just your own, and on stand-by names too. From their entry, tapping any night in their history brings you back to that night, so it's a round trip rather than a dead end.

Whose guest they are

Every entry carries a coloured chip for the pair who brought them. It's set from whoever added them, and it follows the person rather than the seat — if you claim one of Stephanie's spare seats for a friend, that friend is your guest sitting in seat 5, not hers.

If someone has come with more than one of you over the season, they'll carry a chip for each. Change it any time with Guest of in their details.

Two of the same person

It happens — "Bob Whitfield" on one night, "Bob W." on another, and his history splits in two. Open the entry you want to keep and tap Merge a duplicate.

The list offers both real book entries and names that were only ever typed onto a seat, which is usually where a duplicate comes from in the first place.

Pick one and you're told exactly what will happen before anything moves: how many nights end up on one entry, how many seats get renamed, which missing details get filled in from the duplicate, and whether a record is being removed. You also choose which spelling survives.

• Blank fields on the entry you keep are filled from the duplicate. Fields you've already filled in are never overwritten.
• Notes from both are kept.
• The entry remembers what it was merged with, so you can see later why the history looks the way it does.

Offering a seat

Tap Offer to the group on any seat you won't fill. It drops into the pool on that night, and the other two see it right away.

The seat is still yours. Take it back any time before somebody claims it — and once it's claimed, you'll see who has it and who they're bringing.

Seats going spare at the top of the season list filters down to just the nights with something in the pool.

Claiming a spare seat

When someone offers a seat, it turns green on that night. Put in the name of whoever is coming and tap Claim it — no permission needed, they already said it was free.

First tap wins. If two of you go for the same seat within moments of each other the page sorts it out by time and tells the later one, so nobody turns up to a seat that's taken.

Give a claimed seat back with Give it back and it returns to the pool for the others.

Asking for an empty seat

A seat doesn't have to be offered for you to ask about it. Any seat in another pair with no guest on it gets a Request this seat button.

Put in who you'd bring and send it. There's a second line for a note if it would help — "her birthday that week", "only if nobody else wants it" — which is optional and goes straight to the pair who own the seat. Asking for a favour reads better with a reason.

Nothing moves yet — they see your name, your guest and your note, with Give it to them or Keep it on their own panel, and it's theirs to decide.

• Give it to them — the seat fills with your guest's name, marked via your pair so everyone can see whose guest it is.
• Keep it — the ask clears from their night and their badge, and you're told: "Kevin kept this one." You get Clear to tidy it away, or Ask again if something's changed.

Keeping a seat turns down that ask, not you forever — a fresh ask later stands on its own and reaches them normally.

You can see a seat is already spoken for before you ask. A seat with someone's request on it carries a pulsing amber has asked badge right beside the Request button, and an amber panel underneath names them, who they'd bring, their note, and who it's waiting on.

Open the box anyway and it repeats the warning above the fields. Ask if you still want to — the owner sees both asks with both notes, and picks.

Pull an ask back any time with Cancel.

When someone asks you

An ask waiting on you doesn't sit quietly in a dialog. An amber seat request waiting on you badge appears on the season page and pulses until you deal with it — the same treatment the early-access asks get, because both are somebody waiting on somebody.

Tap it and the page filters to what needs you and scrolls straight to that night. The night itself carries a matching amber Review request pill, pulsing the same way, so the badge and the row are obviously the same thing.

It clears the moment you tap Give it to them or Keep it — there's no separate "mark as read".

Seat usage

Analytics at the top answers the question that settles arguments: who actually used their seats this season.

Every seat on every night lands in one of four buckets, and the four always add up to 54 — six seats across nine nights:

• Used by the pair who own it — they put someone in it.
• Passed to another pair — offered and taken, or requested and granted. The sharing working as intended.
• Offered, nobody took it — put up for grabs and left there.
• Nobody's answer — no name, no offer, nothing.

The donut shows that split for the whole group. Below it, each pair gets its own bar across their 18 seat-nights, plus how many they borrowed from everyone else.

Whole season or nights so far

Early on, most of the season reads as Nobody's answer simply because it hasn't happened yet. Switch to Nights so far to count only nights that have already been and gone — that's the honest measure of who used what.

Underneath: who you've brought most often, and a night-by-night table of how many seats each pair filled.

Asking for extra tickets

The Early access tab is everything else on at the Straz this season — 87 shows that aren't part of our subscription. Tickets for these have to be bought, and KT places the order with the venue.

So this isn't a vote. When you tap Want in, it asks how many tickets you want, and that number goes on the card. KT adds everyone's up and that's what she asks the venue for.

• Want in — say how many tickets and tap Request. The card then shows the group total.
• Maybe — you're interested but not committing to a number. It counts as interest, not as tickets.
• Drop it — takes your request off.

The order

Open Details & order on any show. The top half is who wants tickets and how many; the bottom half is KT's working area for what the venue says:

• Where it stands — Nobody has asked yet · Asking the venue · Held for us · Bought · Missed it.
• Price per ticket and Tickets secured — the cost works itself out, and Mark paid records it.
• Order by — the date the venue needs an answer. This is the one that matters; it's usually long before the show.
• Who at the venue and Notes — the name, the number, what they said about seats and deposits.

If KT secures fewer than the group asked for, a red line says so — 2 secured for 3 wanted, 1 short — so nobody assumes they're covered when they aren't.

There's a note field under your own request for anything worth passing on: two together, an aisle, whatever.

How these stay on the radar

A request in a tab nobody opens is a request that gets missed, so anything with tickets wanted and no order behind it chases you in three places:

• Needs sorting out sits at the top of the Early access tab, soonest deadline first.
• The Early access tab itself goes red with a count.
• A line on the season tab — where everyone actually is — saying how many asks are open and when the soonest one is due. Tap it to jump straight there.

Once KT marks it Bought or Missed it, it stops chasing. Inside three weeks of the deadline it turns amber; past the deadline it goes red.

Seeing them alongside our nights

On the season tab, the second button — All + early access — slots these into the calendar in date order, as thin grey rows between our own nights. It's the quickest way to see that a show you fancy falls the week after Gatsby.

They're deliberately quiet — no artwork, no seat strip — so our nine subscription nights stay the thing your eye lands on. Each row shows how many tickets the group wants and who asked, and View opens the same order page. Anything still needing to be sorted keeps its gold border here too.

All nights goes back to just our nine. Seats going spare and Needs my answer are about our own seats, so they show only those too. Whichever you pick is remembered on your phone.

The halls

The Straz is a campus of several rooms, not one theater. The Venue tab lists them with what each one seats and what tends to play there.

Every night of our subscription is in Morsani Hall, the big one — that's where our six seats live. The early-access list ranges across the smaller rooms, so it's worth knowing which is which before you mark something.

Open a hall to see our nights there and what else is on, and tap any of our nights to jump straight to its seats.

Admin

Kevin is group admin. From Users he can add someone, set or change a mobile number, and move a person between seat pairs.

An admin can also answer on anyone's behalf — pick a name from Answering as in the top corner. Useful when someone texts you rather than opening the page. Their panel shows the change came from you.

For everyone's answers to save, share this page on claude.ai with Can edit.