FOR REAL

FOR REAL

A musical journalism and collective memory experience exploring what it means to matter

Created by Andrea Voets, Artistic Director of Resonate Productions, FOR REAL is a musical journalism and collective memory experience that asks the powerful questions: What does it mean to matter? To have dignity, to feel understood? It blends in-depth social reporting with original live music to expose emotional blind spots of our society.

At its core, this experience confronts the deep, often invisible ways voices, thoughts, and ambitions have been intellectually undermined and dismissed. It begins with a profound communal reckoning—fourteen women reflect on personal and professional encounters with the insidious violence of being underestimated, unheard, or ignored. Their testimonies reveal how this undermining erodes confidence, shapes relationships, and alters the trajectory of lives.

As an audience member, you can step into the performance experience not just to witness, but to participate. Through a groundbreaking form of musical improvisation, musicians become co-investigators, using sound to hold space for unscripted, vulnerable conversations with the audience. Together, we uncover what dignity - or lack thereof - sounds like in real time.

Every performance is recorded and released as a podcast episode, creating a resonant collection of voices speaking into being a future where everyone is taken seriously.

FOR REAL, in deep community with the audience, resists prescribing solution and instead creates a space where gathered witnessing can spark new possibilities for how we might treat one another as if we truly matter. Because dignity is not a luxury, it is the foundation of belonging, trust, and justice.