Watching “FOCUS,” I felt a strange sense of déjà vu. Not that I had seen the performance before, but that I had experienced the exact thing happening on stage; that the sprawling and untamed thoughts that overwhelm the show’s sole character had, on many an occasion, taken hold of me. 

Divided into seven repeating scenes, with each adding a piece and building onto the show’s audio-visual landscape, “FOCUS” instills in its audience the discomfort and freneticism that an unnamed student (played by sophomore Alexander Hewlett) feels while trying to pay attention in class. With every new dramatic fragment—sound effects, lighting or a set, for example—director junior Dakotah Jennifer grants her audience, pulling back the curtain a bit farther, tension builds toward the final iteration that incorporates all of these production elements at once. I hesitate to call the finale a release, however. It was more of the satisfaction that comes with seeing the show’s unified form, the disparate elements of a jagged consciousness finally coalescing into a (somewhat) coherent image. The show succeeds at building anxiety through its structure, forcing you to adapt to whatever each layer poses to you (and withholds from you). 

Show Art by Gavi Weitzman

The show art for FOCUS.

“FOCUS” begins by dropping the audience into the chaotic mind of the student. The first layer, only a voice accompanied by a black screen, introduces the internal conflict—the student’s thoughts appear and vanish in a moment or chase their own tail to exhaustion, jumping from idea to idea and lamenting the lack of clarity, all while tiptoeing around what the character should be focusing on. He worries that he is alone in this losing battle, that everyone else mans the helm of their consciousness while he spins in circles, unable to gain control. 

The second scene forces the audience to retain the aural experience of the opening as a bare stage appears among complete silence and the student whose voice was just heard mimes his monologue. In Beckettian fashion, he seems incapable of maintaining calm for more than a moment, as if every attempt to quiet his mind was met with an even stronger barrage of thoughts, causing him to restlessly move around the stage while he performs his speech. Even from a distance and with a mask on, Hewlett excels in his physical performance. He expresses only through motion the discomforting agility of a distracted mind, and he does it three times throughout the play as new elements such as lighting and a set are added. When the final scene puts everything together and he actually speaks while performing, it almost feels like discounting his ability to express things so well through the body. 

[Our interview with the FOCUS playwright before the show’s debut]

While the show develops through its repetitions, the more complete picture does not settle the mind of the student nor the audience—rather, it amplifies the feeling of overstimulation. Even when deprived of sound or visual, the periodic invasion of uninvited thoughts proves disorienting, and the anxiety of feeling powerless in this struggle is captured well in the student’s bursts of monologue, explaining how “my thoughts are being screamed around me through a megaphone, and I hear the feedback constantly screeching in my ears.” The deliberate introduction of new elements does, however, highlight their role. For example, the fourth scene featured more dynamic lighting that emphasized the brightness and overexposure of the student’s thoughts. 

Aside from the stellar work of Hewlett on the stage, the show’s success can be attributed to the strength behind the scenes. Writer junior Shaelee Commettant manages the tension of her character’s mind beautifully, balancing wild and fleeting thoughts with genuine monologue to create a full, coherent space for the audience to inhabit during the show. Jennifer’s direction makes a hard task—telling a story without key theatrical elements—look seamless. The play was written with the knowledge that it would be produced and shown online, and leaning into that curve, incorporating radio elements and taking advantage of not performing live, certainly helped make this show pop. But most importantly, the show expresses a critically relatable aspect of the student experience (even writing this I’ve felt its effects). It brings to life and examines in a unique way the most confounding, most inexplicable, and most human flaw of the young mind. 

Editor’s Note: Senior Cadenza Editor Sabrina Spence served as the stage manager for “Focus.” She had no involvement with this article.

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