Mental health is a huge passion of mine, and when presented with the opportunity to propose a project that combined mental health and design, I jumped. At its core, HOPEFUL was a design-based exploration looking at the intersection of mental health and theatre. Our main goal was to take the emotions inside your head and pull them out into the theatre space. As the project lead, I selected my team of designers, who met before the official rehearsal period started, led auditions for actors, designed on two pieces, did stage manager duties like creating calendars, daily calls, and rehearsal reports, and ultimately had the final say in piece concepts and execution.