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Okay, the next thing you want to do is read your play. Now, it's possible as you were
searching for a play that you might have ended up with a couple of plays, and that's okay.
Start reading your play or plays. I can pretty well guarantee you that within the first ten
pages, if nothing is striking you as funny or interesting or something that you want
to work on with interesting characters, put that play to the side and pick up the next
one. You might want to do a quick reading scan on each play if you have selected more
than one. But if you know absolutely without a doubt that this is the one play that you're
going to do, you can go ahead and jump to the next step, which is thoroughly read the
play. Then most likely you're going to re-read the play. The first time you read the play,
you're really trying to focus on the message, the story, the conflict, the beginning, middle,
and end, the characters. But you can, at that point, or possibly in your next read, start
focusing on sections that might be good to use in your cutting, because that's what you're
going to do--you're going to cut a portion of the play to present. You're not going to
present the whole play, and most of the time you're not going to present one particular
scene. But you're going to create a cutting from all the materials. So, you want to know
the material pretty well. Read it once, read it twice, but start thinking in terms of what
are the best sections of this play.