  A Kauffman bracket on a surface is an invariant for framed links in the
thickened surface, satisfying the Kauffman skein relation and multiplicative
under superposition. This includes representations of the skein algebra of the
surface. We show how an irreducible representation of the skein algebra usually
specifies a point of the character variety of homomorphisms from the
fundamental group of the surface to PSL_2(C), as well as certain weights
associated to the punctures of the surface. Conversely, we sketch a proof of
the fact that each point of the character variety, endowed with appropriate
puncture weights, uniquely determines a Kauffman bracket. Details will appear
elsewhere.
