Since the Haymarket massacre of 1886, Chicagoans have buried and resurrected the city's experiences in performances, politics, and built environments. From Sullivan to Gehry to Chris Ware, from socialist militancy to immigrants' rights, from 19th-century commemorations of the Paris Commune to 21st-century stagings of architectural and political conflicts, Chicago has generated drama in urban theory and practice as well as in theatre.

From the mid-19th to the mid-20th centuries, representations of Africans at the world's fairs were often aligned with the colonial cultural logic of contrasting the “savage” Other with the “civilized” subject, illustrating the politics of modernity, racialization, and imperial conquest. Certain showcases, however, at the world's fairs in the U.S. and South Africa—as well as performances in the white urban environments of Chicago and Johannesburg—undid this binary by introducing new spectacular economies depicting African modernities.