Working In Concert Presents 'Future Perfect' - An Opera Inspired and Shaped by CPS Students

“Future Perfect” is a new opera inspired and shaped by Chicago Public School students that will have its world premiere June 23-26 in an architecturally significant Austin neighborhood venue.

The opera for all ages celebrates interconnectedness as it focuses on Miranette, a curious youth who leaves a forbidding society to go towards a future she wants to see.

“Don’t label me,” she says, as she removes the insignia demotions pinned to the sash all youth are required to wear. She ventures beyond her fenced-in society, and meets a colorful cast of young people, puppets, dragons, butterflies and grown-ups who help her.

The full production is supported by an intergenerational cast of 31 individuals (ages 4-79), an orchestra, costumes and sets.

Librettist Christine Steyer began a partnership with Chicago Public Schools in October 2014. Steyer performed opera excerpts for five different classes at Nicholas Senn High School and facilitated a space for the students to think and write through what it feels like to be labeled: what words like “diversity” and “interconnectedness” mean to them, and what a future perfect world would look like.

The youth cast of "Future Perfect: Top row (left to right): Norah Lougachi, Caleb Reed-Jennings, Isabella Airato, Tekla Schreiner-Witte, Ruby O’Shaughnessey, Henry Lombardo. Bottom row (left to right): Shiloh Jennings, Benjamin Govertsen, Sam Combs, Henry James Hansen, Amelia Holly.

Working In Concert

The opera is drawn from five years of workshops with 1,300 local youths, who examined themes of separateness, interconnectedness and transcendence through a variety of lenses. Workshop participants came from Senn, Lane Tech and Al Raby High Schools and John Kinzie Elementary School, as well as Lincoln Elementary School, and youths from the Unity Temple Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Oak Park. Facilitated by musicians, poets and artists, the workshops yielded many of the opera’s lyrics and costume designs.

Three costume designs for Future Perfect from workshops with 6th & 8th graders at Kinzie Elementary.

Working in Concert

In addition to Steyer, the award-winning team behind the production includes composer David Shenton, Jeff Award-winning director/ fight choreographer Nick Sandys and conductor Tim Pahel.

Appropriate for ages 5+, the opera is in English with open captioning. It runs one hour and 45 minutes, with no intermission. There is free parking on the street and in next-door lots and is close to the CTA Green Line. The venue is mobility-accessible.

Performances are 7:30 p.m. Thursday and Friday, June 23 & 24; 7 p.m. Saturday, June 25, and 4 p.m. Sunday, June 26, at the Kehrein Arts Center, 5628 W. Washington Blvd.

Tickets are $35 general admission/$50 VIP; seniors age 65+ $25; and students $10 at workinginconcert.org/futureperfect.

The Adult Cast

Working in Concert

The Kehrein Arts Center is a 900-seat storytelling theater, art gallery, and community gathering place—one of the few major building projects on Chicago’s West Side since the 1968 riots. Completed in 1954 by the architectural firm of Belli & Belli, the mid-century modern addition to the all-girls Siena High School evoked the neo-futuristic vision of Eero Saarinen (best known for the St. Louis Gateway Arch). But after Siena moved out in 1971, the building deteriorated until the non-profit charter school Catalyst Circle Rock moved there in 2008 and later purchased the building. Its $5 million renovation was facilitated by $1 million from the Chicago Neighborhood Opportunity Fund and political backing that led to support from the State of Illinois. The building re-opened in May 2019.

–Suzanne Hanney, from online sources