Casa 0101 Theater (2021)

On March 15, 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic suspended operations at CASA 0101 Theater, a community-based multidisciplinary cultural center and theater located in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Boyle Heights. Remaining performances of the theater’s annual play festival Chicanas, Cholas y Chisme were canceled, and Emmanuel Deleage, the organization’s Executive Director, sent staff home. He, along with Founding Artistic Director Josefina López, had COVID-19 to contend with, but another crisis had been looming. The leaders of CASA 0101 had to grapple with a new state bill that threatened the future of the theater and all small not-for-profit theaters in the state. The pandemic shuttered CASA 0101’s doors in March 2020, but the new state law could have longer-term existential ramifications for the organization once it resumed in-person production in Fall 2021.

California State Governor Gavin Newsom signed California Assembly Bill 5 (or AB 5) into law in fall 2019. Going into effect on January 1, 2020, the bill was designed to address the growing gig economy in the State of California. Employers such as Uber and Lyft had historically categorized workers as independent contractors instead of employees. These workers were therefore ineligible to receive state minimum wage, overtime, sick leave, unemployment, workers' compensation, and disability insurance (all benefits that the State of California guarantees workers classified as employees).

AB 5 was a protective measure to thwart worker exploitation in the state, but it also directly threatened the small not-for-profit theater sector, known as intimate theater in Los Angeles, that historically classified artists as independent contractors, paying stipends for theatrical work. If the theater could not meet the new requirements of AB 5, reclassifying artists it hired for its productions as employees and paying them according to the provisions of the new law, it would have to explore other models of operating as a producing theater.