The actors will enjoy it —they’ll laugh or frown with concentration, but they’ll be far too nervous to take it in. Start with practicalities: rehearsal schedule, performance times. You need to say something about how you see the play, but showing the cast the designs will explain your general idea much more effectively.
Everyone hates first readings, but they often throw up insights that no one had imagined from solitary study. Go for intensity. Persuade the opening actors to commit themselves, to give it a full go, even if it means stopping and starting again. Reassure them that the others aren’t snickering if they overshoot. They’re thinking: How brave, Damn good for her for giving it a try!
You can launch your ideas at them while the play is still fresh in their minds and they are no longer scared of the ordeal. Get as many actors as possible to talk about it, but beware the know-all who has evolved obscure and elaborate theories about the Inner Meaning, spreading confusion and dismay.
Good questions to ask early on: Where are they? Who is related to whom? How do people feel about each other? What time of year is it? Of day? How old are they? What dialect or accent might they have? Why does he enter the room? Why does she depart? Who’s chasing whom? Begin making distinctions: Is that action big or little? Is that intention nice or nasty? Big nice or little nice? Big nasty or little nasty? (See 55 . Ask: Is it nice or nasty? Big or little?) Also, analyze the playwright’s intention notes (e.g. “he relaxes,” or, an old favourite, “joking but not joking”).
Where is formality broken by casualness? Romance by disappointment? When does the hunter take a new tack? When does the hunted apply new resistance? (See 53 . Every scene is a chase scene.) Discuss and delineate these internal scenes within scenes—not “French Scenes,” which are defined by any entrance or exit of a character —but the individual, dramatic units where a few lines of dialogue or action have their own beginning, middle, and end.