As the gallery designer for Apollinaire Theatre Company's production of Dance Nation by Clare Barron I leaned into the play's themes of girlhood, coming of age, and reality testing. The motif of a slumber party influenced the space with audience engagement activities based on games I remembered playing around the age of 13, the age of Barron's characters. The gallery featured a magnetic truth or dare wall with a mix of slightly chaotic dare's and reflective truth questions. There was also a secret corner where visitors could sneak off to write a confession on the wall, and an origami fortune teller station set up on a table in an area decked out in pillows and blankets in true slumber party fashion.

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Along the largest gallery wall was a series of collage portraits that I created of each member of the cast and production team. While most of the characters were 13 year olds, the actors ranged from 22 - 70 years old per the casting directions in the script. Clare Barron writes, "This play is really about how we carry what happens to us when we're thirteen through the rest of our lives." This line inspired my concept for this section of the gallery design. I led the cast and crew of the production through a writing workshop that asked them to reflect on when they were thirteen, the age of the characters in the play. The questions asked them about their daily lives and core memories from that time, but also focused on their senses. What did childhood and adolescence feel like, taste like, and sound like? I then used their responses, along with photos they shared with me, to collage together "portraits" of each of them. I wanted these to be snapshots of their thirteen-year-old essence and personality. Digital collaging, as a medium for this project, allowed me to try to physicalize memories. I hoped it may have also given the viewers a chance to reflect upon their own adolescence and what they continue to carry with them from that time.