This article introduces a multi-year, multi-site ethnographic study undertaken with 250 young people in drama classrooms in Canada, England, India, Greece, and Taiwan between 2014 and 2019. The experience and findings of that research then became the basis of an original documentary play, Towards Youth, co-produced by Project: Humanity and Crow’s Theatre in Toronto in February 2019. This article elaborates on the relationship built between the lead researcher and the embedded playwright on the project, accounting for their shared vision for the work, their aesthetic and ethical principles in research and playmaking, and finally their efforts to understand how the documentary play and its surrounding pedagogies were apprehended by audience members.