Style? Direct!

I've had a couple of days to reflect on the direction I want to go, and I've come up with something: I have no directing style. How can I? This is my first show. I've never related much to some styles I've read about...spines, verbs, etc. I don't think of Treat as a cat or a dog, or Phillip as a horse or even as the ego.

What I have tried to do is follow the script. I like the blocking written in there. What I have to modify I will, but almost every piece of direction I've given has been motivated by a desire to embody what I've read. Up to a point, this is very appropriate. With good actors, what more do you need?

I think you need bit more...what we would call style? This is what the director visualizes and is responsible for; also, the way in which he or she brings it out?

So, besides adhering to the script itself, I feel at times the need to physically be present in the action to demonstrate my meaning. It's so much quicker that way! And I don't think it freaks the actors out too much. That's my style, I guess.

I feel a bit lame; shouldn't I have worked these things out already? But I need to know how I'm going to take the production to the next level. How to make it alive...this is an intricately organic script; at times the language flows effortlessly in a way that makes even the stychomythic passages seem like ripples in a pond, rather than stair steps to be climbed. Sometimes things have to roughened up, made choppy to contrast the moments that flow so beautifully. Small details are easy to forget about if you don't think about them early on.