I deleted my personality flaws with an immersive theater psych experiment on S.F.’s Haight Street

L.M. Bogad (left) and Jonathan Schoonhoven (right) greet audience members as they arrive for the "Change Your Mind" immersive experience in San Francisco on Friday. Audience members get to participate as patients in the immersive experience and receive personality adjustments from the team.

When I booked an appointment online with "Change Your Mind," an intake form asked, "What is preventing you from being your true self?" I decided to respond with something honest but safe enough to say in a job interview, so I wrote, "I always think I can accomplish more than I actually can."

When I arrived at 440 Haight St. — which looks like a real clinic inside, complete with white walls, a literature-lined waiting room and technicians in lanyards and scrubs — the artist collective Say Nothing and Leave had other plans for how I would edit my personality.

Artists of the Say Nothing and Leave collective exit their Haight Street "clinic" in San Francisco.

The work of immersive theater, which I attended Friday, April 14, fashions a psychological experiment. "No one should have to live with their own flaws," reads a faux-testimonial outside the building. Answer some questions, take a "pill" that looks suspiciously like a common candy, don some goggles and headphones, undergo a procedure, and poof! You can "delete" the most noxious aspects of your personality, all with the aid of a Dr. Masc.

The testimonials continue inside. A staffer named Alyssa (Alyssa Larson) might claim to have undergone the procedure 27 times. "I like myself now. But not too much!" she said.

A flyer for the "Change Your Mind" immersive experience is posted outside the Say Nothing and Leave collective's Haight Street "clinic" in San Francisco.

If you have too many bad attributes to choose from, don't worry. As you sit down and eye fellow patients, a staffer named Ellie (Ellie DiBerardino) might say, "We have lots of tools to help you find the worst part of you."

Tablets materialize, asking more questions — to pick one of two photos, to select one of three behaviors you find most objectionable. Soon, my results came back. My personality pathology is that I’m a "self-righteous princess," which in my shame and misery I then had to discuss with the entire staff.

Chronicle theater critic Lily Janiak reads a "Change Your Mind" brochure at the Say Nothing and Leave artist collective's Haight Street "clinic" in San Francisco.

Other possible results: "bougie prepper," "clingy charlatan," "basic flake." You can opt to change your result to one that resonates more, but demanding a redo is something a self-righteous princess might do, so I stayed the course.

"Change Your Mind," which is the Say Nothing and Leave's first public offering, gets right what much immersive theater gets wrong. It understands that the audiences it attracts like to have playful, arch, in-character conversations (guilty), and it creates the atmosphere and trains its artists to make that happen without it feeling forced or scripted.

Jonathan Schoonhoven (left) places a wristband on Chronicle Theater Critic Lily Janiak's wrist during the "Change Your Mind" immersive experience at Say Nothing and Leave artist collective's Haight Street "clinic" in San Francisco.

In its hour-long run time, it changes scenery and activity just often enough so that you never get bored. That bar might sound low, but at a lot of these shows or "experiences," individual scenes or rooms just aren't as dynamic as creators think they are, so you spend a lot of time standing around waiting for something to happen or wondering if the main event has happened and it's time to go.

As Alyssa and I headed to a small chamber behind a hospital curtain and I sat in a wheelchair, she started asking me more personal questions. She told me to give my self-righteous princess a name, and I chose Bea Otch. She asked me how my personality pathology affected my relationships, how I might be different without Bea Otch lording over me, and I tried to answer truthfully.

Alyssa Larson of the Say Nothing and Leave collective places headphones on Jack Horton in "Change Your Mind" in San Francisco.

Then on came the headphones, which piped in tiny voices whispering in 360 degrees around my head and gave reverb to the voices of the flesh-and-blood humans near me. The goggles I then strapped on had lights inside them that blinked and changed color in time with the audio and a screen I watched. The whole thing was like a strobe-light show contained in the space from your eyes to the tip of your nose — dizzying and disorienting enough to make your brain puddle into goo.

But that was the point: In such a state, as the voice of Dr. Masc (L.M. Bogad) led me through an out-of-body experience, with a chime-filled, celestial sound design, it really seemed possible to break down my personality, delete some parts of it and rebuild it from scratch.

Jack Horton undergoes his "personality edit" as a part of Say Nothing and Leave collective's "Change Your Mind" immersive experience.

At one point in the procedure, the droll tone ceases, and each patient has to make a choice with real consequences for how the piece ends. If the setup here feels hastier and less believable than the rest of the show, it does force you to decide what kind of person you are: A rule follower or a maverick? Passive or active? Self-loathing or self-embracing?

With my personality edited and Bea Otch zapped away from my brain, I emerged from my quarters and at last got to meet Bogad's Dr. Masc in person. He was exactly like in all the videos I’d just watched of him, with a tuck-you-in-at-night voice and the self-satisfied imperturbability of a guru. It felt like a real clinic, where the underlings do all the real work and the doctor breezes in at the last moment to bless you with a smile and sign his name.

L.M. Bogad, as Dr. Masc, stands below his portrait in the "Change Your Mind" immersive experience at the Say Nothing and Leave artist collective's Haight Street "clinic" in San Francisco.

One of the last things "Change Your Mind" told me was that the procedure works better "if you believe it works." When I got home and consciously tried to be nicer than usual to my loved ones, performance art had, for a moment at least, a scientifically observable, medically significant result.

Reach Lily Janiak: [email protected]

"Change Your Mind": Created by Jonathan Schoonhoven, Ellie DiBerardino and Alex Howard. Through April 29. 65 minutes. $49. 440 Haight St., S.F. https://changeyourmind.show

Lily Janiak joined the San Francisco Chronicle as theater critic in May 2016. Previously, her writing appeared in Theatre Bay Area, American Theatre, SF Weekly, the Village Voice and HowlRound. She holds a BA in theater studies from Yale and an MA in drama from San Francisco State.

Your weekly guide to Bay Area arts & entertainment.