Once you have a detailed, working awareness of a script
gained through analytic reading techniques, what do you
do?

Take what you have discovered by reading, and use your
painstakingly-learned theater crafts and arts to give it to an
audience. A designer whose careful reading reveals that
King Lear's first scene is no test but rather a public exhibi-
tion is ready to think about what the exhibition place looks
like and what the exhibitors might wear. An actor doing
the Ghost in Hamlet's act 1, scene 5 knows he can severely
underplay because both Hamlet and the audience want so
desperately to hear that they will provide total attention. A
director whose technical analysis reveals that the action of
Oedipus Tyrannos is launched by a plague will remember
that the plague ends once the murderer is discovered.
Thereby the director will not miss the point of the play,
and -- more important -- neither will the audience.

If your reading of the script is good enough to reveal the
tools, weapons, methods, advantages (and liabilities) pro-
vided by the playwright, then (and I swear on my
forebears' ghosts, only then) are you ready to apply your
theater training, your theater arts and crafts, your talent.
Any other order of attack robs you of your main ally: the
strength of the writer whose script you admire enough to
stage.

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