We Are Good is an experimental music/theater residency and performance process developed with writer/director and civic practice pioneer Michael Rohd and theater artist/practitioner Quenna Lené Barrett that explores the ways we as a community deal with the past and imagine our futures. Designed to foster authentic inquiry among audiences of varied social and political backgrounds, We Are Good uses techniques developed with Deep Listening practitioners Leila Ramagopal Pertl and Brian Pertl to bring strangers together through communal music-making in an original work that provokes participants to explore: What role should the past play in decisions about the future? How do past events shape us? What responsibility do we have for what happened before we were alive? How does a community make hard choices together? Who do we believe?

An open framework for the process of tackling difficult questions as a group, We Are Good includes Deep Listening and story circle residency sessions that invite discussion on moments of challenging collective decision-making, how past events shape current community decisions, and how people’s lived experience around that decision-making today differs based on their identity, economic reality, and culture.

The project culminates in a participatory public performance, which includes creative acts generated by participants through the residency process. Interactive text scores and participant stories weave together with musical explorations by composers such as folk musician Rhiannon Giddens, improviser/activist Daniel Bernard Roumain, and jazz bassist Jordyn Davis. Each show's score will reflect unique musical selections, through an "interactive jukebox" stocked with participant-inspired compositions and pop music arrangements that provide diverse responses to the question of what it means to be an American.

Fifth House Ensemble is developing this project with performance venues, universities, libraries, and community organizations in a digital format this season.

At a time when the ability to think for one’s self while balancing contributions to a collective whole is more urgent than ever, We Are Good offers participants of diverse viewpoints and beliefs the opportunity to connect through the visceral experience of communal music making, paired with a compelling allegorical story that brings immediate context to the urgent need for mutual respect, shared experience, and open dialogue.