In this article, we consider the aesthetic, political and pedagogical strengths of a verbatim theatre performance, "The Middle Place" by Project: Humanity, a play that explores the experiences of shelter youth in Toronto, Canada. This ethnographic study moved from drama classrooms into theatres and charted audience responses to the production, its pre- and post-show programming and the company's curation of the theatre space. Using data from post-performance interviews with youth, we analyse how young people articulate the impact of socially engaged theatre. And pulling from ethnographic fieldnotes and researcher email correspondence, we further illustrate how the mere presence of youth and shelter youth at the theatre altered the ways in which audiences interacted with the play and the extended programming, disrupting the usual social contract of theatre-going. Project: Humanity's intentional mix of social classes and ages among the audience created encounters that have much to teach us about theatre's ability to unleash the "unruly" and to artistically re-create a world highly recognisable to those who inhabit it. (Contains 3 figures and 7 notes.)