Data area

It's been a while since I used a data area and I'm having trouble accessing it 
from an RPG program.  I've created an 8 character data area called CUTOFF that 
holds a date in yyyymmdd format.  I'm simply trying to read the data area from 
the RPG program.  I have an "I" spec that looks like this:

IDTAARA     UDS
                                1    8    CUTOFF

Shouldn't I be able to access (read) the data in the program without doing a 
DEFN, etc?  For testing purposes I put the statements above in a working 
program and listed CUTOFF as an output field in the header, which should 
display the date but doesn't show up.

Do I need to have a RTVDTAARA in my CL?  I know I do if I want to convert it to 
a parm and access it in the program that way but, again, I thought if I wanted 
to use the data area implicitly I could simply include the "I" specs and use it 
like any other variable in the program.

TIA.