In an aqueous haze of digital, neon-splashed water, a young beach lifeguard grapples with the legacy of the one she could not save: her brother who died in Vietnam. In composer Heidi Rodewald’s (Passing Strange) propulsive pop requiem for the young lives lost in an endless war, she sets radically recontextualized text—salvaged largely from defunct lifesaving manuals and other found texts, told through Donna DiNovelli’s poetic libretto—to incantatory rock anthems.

Representing the cohort of youth that was drafted to the war, a chorus of lifeguards—comprising the diverse alumni of the Chicago Children’s Choir— perform harmonies with a band led by singer David Driver against an evocative video backdrop, ultimately finding catharsis in a galvanizing truth: that we honor our fallen soldiers only when we defy the political drumbeat of senseless war.