Actor Tom Gough and San Jose’s City Lights Theater Company faced a frightening new normal at the beginning of the year, when the new “gig” work law, AB-5, went into effect.

For the company’s production of “Stage Kiss,” Gough and other cast and crew members were originally set to earn stipends as independent contractors, the same way many who work temporary jobs for smaller, nonprofits arts companies have long been compensated.

SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA – JANUARY 30: Scenic designer Ron Gasparinetti, right, and actor Tom Gough, center, talk before a show at City Lights Theater in San Jose, Calif., on Thursday, Jan. 30, 2020. (Randy Vazquez / Bay Area News Group) 

But AB-5 dictated that such freelance arrangements could no longer work for City Lights — or for many other nonprofit theater, dance or music groups in California. Under AB-5, “Stage Kiss” actors and crew members either had to either be hired as hourly employees, which City Lights couldn’t afford, or do the show as volunteers.

“To be frank, having to switch everyone who participates in our shows to employee, we’d close for sure,” said City Lights artistic director Lisa Mallette. The company says complying with AB-5 would hike City Lights’ annual costs for cast and crew members from $50,000 to $500,000.

City Lights is experiencing firsthand how AB-5 has begun to upend the way nonprofit arts groups do business in California as part of the state’s $273.5 billion creative economy. Many fear that the law will force smaller arts companies to cut back on performances or disappear altogether. This would not only mean fewer performances for dance, music and theater lovers to savor but a diminished training ground for young emerging artists.

AB-5 codified a 2018 California Supreme Court ruling, which was designed to ensure that California’s millions of independent contractors can enjoy the benefits of minimum wage laws, workman’s compensation, unemployment insurance and social security. In addition to actors, dancers and musicians, the law also affects Lyft and Uber drivers, truckers, language interpreters, unlicensed nail technicians and freelance journalists.

Gough, Mallette and others support the intention of AB-5. They care that artists receive fair pay and benefits. But they despair at the way the law was rolled out with no grace period, that it extends to certain types of jobs that don’t fit into an hourly-wage paradigm and that the bill’s language is ambiguous. For example, it doesn’t define what it means to be a “fine artist,” a category that has received one of the law’s exemptions.

Above all, they question whether legislators thought through all its ramifications.

“The scorched earth way it’s been implemented doesn’t take into account all the different kinds of people affected,” said Gough. “As an independent artist, it’s worrisome. It’s going to diminish opportunities for us as artists, and it’s going to lead to a cultural death valley.”

In the end, City Lights made some contractors employees and found a workaround for Gough and others that may be adopted by other arts groups. The theater company is treating them as volunteers who receive a per diem allowance for meals.

“We’re not against AB-5,” said Julie Baker, executive director of Californians for the Arts, an advocacy group in Sacramento. “But the question is how does it work in a huge and complex arts ecosystem. You just can’t map out all the hiring scenarios we find ourselves in.”

For example, do singers or actors, performing one night at a gala or for a staged reading, need to be made employees? “That is mind-boggling to think you would have a one-night employee,” said Debbie Chinn, president of Theatre Bay Area and executive director of San Francisco-based Opera Parallèle, which endured a 30-percent increase in AB-5-related costs for its May production of “Harvey Milk.”

SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA – JANUARY 30: Scenic designer Ron Gasparinetti, left, and actor Tom Gough, right, talk to each other before a show at City Lights Theater in San Jose, Calif., on Thursday, Jan. 30, 2020. (Randy Vazquez / Bay Area News Group) 

The bill’s author, Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, (D-San Diego), said she understands artists’ concerns and is working on a new bill, AB-1850, to clarify how different industries should implement the law. But Gonzalez remains committed to the idea that independent contractors, including artists, deserve fair compensation and benefits.

“We don’t want to keep giving into the idea of the starving artist,” she said. With Assemblywoman Christy Smith (D-Santa Clarita), Gonzalez has asked for $20 million be allocated in the 2020-21 budget to help “small-budget” nonprofit arts groups comply with AB-5.

Actors Equity is among the unions that support AB-5; its members already receive the protections it outlines. “Theater is dangerous,” said Brandon Lorenz, the union’s national director of Communications and Public Policy. “Dancers were recently named the most physically demanding job in the nation. That’s one reason why everyone who works in theater should have access to protections like workers’ compensation and unemployment insurance.”

AB-5 affects all arts groups but poses a bigger challenge to smaller companies that rely on non-union performers and production crew members because that’s all they can afford. Alameda-based Island City Opera found it couldn’t afford to comply with AB-5 and postponed its March production, a decision that sent reverberations throughout the Bay Area arts world.

“We are working to the best of our ability to be in AB-5 compliance for our upcoming August show ‘Scalia/Ginsburg’ at the Lesher Center in Walnut Creek,” said Sylvia Amorino, executive director at Concord-based Solo Opera. She and her board had to quickly find $10,000 to institute payroll and to cover insurance, workman’s comp, attorney’s fees and other costs. “This is a hardship for a small nonprofit like ours to come up with quickly and with no grace period,” she said.

Meanwhile, freelance artists have taken to social media to describe losing work from employers who they say can longer afford to hire them, even for short-time gigs. Some wonder whether they can afford to stay in the Bay Area.

“It’s already so difficult for freelance artists to make a living in the Bay Area,” said Susie Medak, managing director of Berkeley Repertory Theater, which hires both Equity members and non-union artists for its shows. “If that means they can’t work as much, they may ask, ‘why stay in California,’ when you can move to a much less expensive community where these restrictions don’t exist.”

Medak also worries that the Bay Area’s long-thriving arts community could be hollowed out if companies cancel shows, curtail seasons or avoid new and experimental works.

“Many of us feel that this will result in creative drain in the Bay Area and in California,” Medak said.

Californians for the Arts’ Baker said the proposed, one-time funding would be “a tremendous help.” Still, it would take months for the legislature to approve the funding and for a grants program to be implemented. She said arts groups are hurting right now, which is why emergency funding needs to be made available.

“We receive daily reports of organizations reducing programming or closing their doors altogether as they do not have the funds available to be in compliance with AB-5,” Baker said.

Amid the AB-5 fallout, advocates hope that more groups won’t have to postpone or cancel more productions — situations that can erode confidence within a company and among donors and season-ticket buyers. “It’s really hard to ramp back and do a show after you’ve canceled,” Theatre Bay Area’s Chinn said.