Island City Opera puts off key production amid uncertainty over AB5

Joshua Kosman January 6, 2020, Updated: January 13, 2020, 9:42 am

Island City Opera founder Eileen Meredith at her home in Lafayette.Photo: Scott Strazzante, The Chronicle

When AB5, the “gig work” law governing the classification of employees and independent contractors, passed the California Legislature last year, many midsize arts organizations worried about its potential to disrupt their operations and finances. Now, that disruption has begun.

Island City Opera, the small but enterprising Alameda company, has postponed its March production of Dame Ethel Smyth’s 1906 opera “The Wreckers.” It’s the Bay Area’s first acknowledged performing arts casualty of AB5 since the law went into effect Jan. 1.

A statement posted Sunday, Jan. 5, on the company’s website announced the postponement, which gave no date for rescheduled performances: “ The ICO management team is investigating exactly what is required to meet the new rules, and developing a plan for the future.”

Reached by telephone, Artistic Director Eileen Meredith declined to offer any specifics on the issues that had led to the postponement.

“I don’t know all the details of the regulations,” she said. “But since we have such a short time frame, we decided it wasn’t appropriate to go forward.

“The changes are big, and we’re going to have to figure out what they are and how to comply with them. We’ve all followed the same model, but now the model has changed.”

Under the terms of AB5, freelance workers across a range of industries who have long been regarded as independent contractors must be classified as employees once they reach a set threshold of work, which means they have to be compensated like employees.

For many arts organizations, uncertainty about the law’s reach is causing the most difficulties. The legislative language includes a long list of specific exemptions that includes “fine artists,” but no one knows precisely what types of performers, designers and production staff that might include.

“This is literally keeping me up at night,” said Nicolas Aliaga Garcia, the artistic director of Pocket Opera. “It’s an existential crisis.

“Every lawmaker whose staffers we talk to tell us the language was left vague intentionally and that we shouldn’t worry about it. But every article I read says, ‘No, do worry about it.’ ”

Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego, who authored AB5, issued a series of tweets on Sunday in defense of the law that included a promise to “continue to work to clarify and specifically add language for creatives like musicians.”

But in the meantime, arts companies are left trying to game out the budgetary effects of complying with the new law. Companies that use artists as independent contractors, even for a single production, could find themselves obliged to take them on as regular employees. That would mean higher expenses not only for compensation but also for payroll taxes and bookkeeping costs. Debbie Chinn, the executive director of Opera Parallèle, said she expected the terms of the law to raise the cost of the company’s spring production, Stewart Wallace and Michael Korie’s operatic biography “Harvey Milk,” by as much as 30%.

At Lamplighters, the 57-year-old San Francisco company that specializes in the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan, Executive Director Cheryl Blalock said she had already raised ticket prices to help defray an estimated 17% increase in the cost of next month’s production of “Princess Ida.” But the coming season, which begins in June, is still being rethought.

“Normally we’d be announcing our season right now,” she said. “But now we’re asking whether we need to cut back. Should we stop touring to venues in Walnut Creek and Mountain View? Should we stop doing other musicals? We can’t count on raising enough money to keep doing what we do without dramatically changing the shape of our season.”

For the 3-year-old Island City Opera, the postponement of “The Wreckers” —a Wagnerian drama set among the fishing villages of the Cornish coast — represents an especially piquant loss. Music by female composers is still underrepresented on concert stages, and the Alameda production, originally scheduled for March 20-28, would have been the first known local staging of Smyth’s work.

In recent conversations, participants in the production — several of whom said they hadn’t yet signed contracts — put on a brave face.

West Edge Opera Music Director Jonathan Khuner.Photo: Noah Berger, Special to The Chronicle

Conductor Jonathan Khuner, who also serves as music director of West Edge Opera, described the project as being “on simmer,” but added that “it’s a signal when a company decides it can’t gamble on a production.”

Tenor Alex Boyer, who was scheduled to take a lead role in “The Wreckers” as the latest of several appearances with the company, said he hadn’t given up on the possibility of returning to the piece.

“I’m going to keep it on a back burner,” he said. “I’ll keep the score handy and continue to look at it. I don’t have anything else in my schedule for that time slot, so I might as well keep it open.

“This isn’t a big financial hit for me, but it is a big cultural hit, because the piece is so interesting.”

Related articles SF Chronicle Articles

AB5, California’s landmark gig-work law, takes effect Jan. 1 amid controversy

Musicians and actors invented the gig. A new law threatens their way of working