The experience begins as soon as you walk in from the street in the Tenderloin and go straight into a diner to get served a pancake dinner.
Suddenly, the action in Compton's Cafeteria Riot begins happening around you.
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"When you're watching a play on a stage from your seat, you have an emotional response to it, but when the action is happening right next to you then you can imagine yourself being there," said the play's co-writer Mark Nassar.
He helped create the Off-Broadway hit "Tony and Tina's Wedding", an immersive play that puts the audience in the middle of an Italian American wedding.
Nassar was looking for a new immersive story to tell when he went to the Tenderloin Museum and started talking to executive director Katie Conry.
She showed him an exhibit about the transgender community's history in the Tenderloin and especially the Compton's Cafeteria Riot.
"It was the first known instance of militant resistance by the queer community to police harassment in US history," said Conry.
The play is set in August of 1966, at a time of tension between the queer community and police.
The tension exploded one night at Compton's Cafeteria, a late-night hangout for transgender women and sex workers on the corner of Turk and Taylor streets.
"This was their office when they weren't walking up and down the streets and a place to rest your legs and check up on the other girls," said Donna Persona, who used to visit the cafeteria in the 60s, decades before she identified as transgender.
She and fellow LGBTQ+ activist Collette LeGrande sat down with Nassar to write the play.
"I saw these very beautiful women who were a little too overdressed and sexily dressed. They were transgender women, sex workers living in the Tenderloin. And I went back every weekend for month and months because I was so fascinated and they were so friendly," said Persona, who lived in San Jose at the time with her parents.
In 1966, San Francisco was just becoming a gay friendly city, but it was still illegal for men to dress as women.
At the time, transgender women were called queens or hair fairies. Cross-dressers were the targets of police harassment.
"The queens had just had enough and fought back," said Conry. "They broke sugar shakers and broke out all the windows. They started beating cops over the heads with their bags. The whole restaurant erupted and pushed the cops out the door."
The play recreates the tension from the night of the riot as a police officer comes in and out of the restaurant to harass the transgender women.
"I think the immersive experience just takes things to another level, and that cop is right next to you and threatening people. You feel it. You can imagine yourself being there, in this case two in the morning in the Tenderloin," said Nassar.
The play aims to be historically correct. That meant including activists from the Vanguard, a group of queer homeless youth who got guidance from Glide Memorial.
"They're the ones that picketed Compton's and started the political fervor and the discontent among a lot of the patrons. The riot probably would not have happened without their passion and agitation," said Conry.
The play is also providing members of the transgender community with plenty of opportunities in the theater.
The transgender characters are played by transgender actors, plus behind the scenes, the director, set designer, costume designer, and stage managers are transgender.
So is co-writer Donna Persona, who came out as transgender late in life, after her father died, because she worried about how her identity would impact him.
"I talk to the cast as much as possible and tell them that the girls were continually in fear, moment to moment, hour to hour. They expected the most horrible things, and I want that to come across when we perform the play."
The Tenderloin Museum now co-produces the play in a converted space a few blocks from the original Compton's Cafeteria.
"Seeing it in the Tenderloin is a big part of the experience. It feels more immersive," said Conry.
Compton's Cafeteria Riot is performed every Friday and Saturday night in the Tenderloin.