In this chapter, I describe an intergenerational collaboration between Chicago Public High School Students and a collective of seasoned civil rights activists at the Beloved Community Center (BCC) in Greensboro, NC that led to a cross-temporal retelling of the 1979 Greensboro Massacre. In it, I argue that the collaboration between the members of the ensemble and their counterparts at BCC highlights how public humanities methods are generatively used outside of academia. Both groups used Emily Mann's documentary play, Greensboro: A Requiem, to collectively re-examine the state-sanctioned, racist violence of the Greensboro Massacre and its contemporary implications. Together, they dreamt into being a vision of what a more equitable and just world might look like and worked to embody that vision in their respective organizations. “Performing the Past/Rehearsing the Future” investigates how these processes of envisioning and embodying alternative futures through theater and activism can inform our approach to public humanities projects within and beyond academia.