San Francisco’s reputation as America’s progressive arts mecca is built on undeniable muscle. In 2024 the greater Bay Area sustained 378 nonprofit theater, music, and dance organizations with budgets above $25,000, 41 Actors’ Equity houses, more than 120 non-Equity and fringe companies, and over 70 annual festivals—from the free, 87-year-old Stern Grove Festival to the San Francisco Fringe, Noise Pop, and the newly revived San Francisco International Arts Festival. The region’s live-performance economy generated an estimated $2.1 billion in direct and indirect spending last year alone, according to the latest San Francisco Travel Association and Americans for the Arts joint report. Davies Symphony Hall, the War Memorial Opera House, Z Space, the Curran, and hundreds of converted warehouses in Dogpatch and West Oakland remain booked 300 nights a year.

The talent pipeline is equally impressive. The Bay Area is home to three top-tier conservatories (San Francisco Conservatory of Music, American Conservatory Theater’s MFA program, and the Stanford TAPS department), plus countless independent training studios. Local playwrights routinely migrate to Broadway (Rajiv Joseph, Tarell Alvin McCraney, Lauren Gunderson). Homegrown directors such as Ryan Coogler and Boots Riley cut their teeth in small Oakland theaters before conquering Hollywood. The region’s sound designers, lighting artists, and stage managers are poached by the Metropolitan Opera, the Royal Shakespeare Company, and Cirque du Soleil on a regular basis.

Yet for all this wattage, the backstage reality remains stubbornly dim.

Between 2020 and 2025, Bay Area arts organizations paid out at least $1.87 million in publicly documented discrimination settlements—an undercount, since many cases end in confidential arbitration or pre-litigation payouts that never surface. The paper trail is damning:

• 2021: A marquee San Francisco presenting organization settled racial- and gender-discrimination claims for $425,000 after Black and female employees were passed over for promotion in favor of less-qualified white men.
• 2022: A midsize theater company paid $310,000 to a stage manager demoted after maternity leave and told, in writing, that “mothers can’t handle the hours.”
• 2023: An East Bay contemporary-dance company settled disability-accommodation failures for $180,000 after refusing to install a ramp and canceling a dancer’s contract post-injury.
• 2024: A South-of-Market black-box theater settled an age-discrimination case for $265,000 brought by a 52-year-old lighting designer replaced by a 28-year-old with no professional credits.
• 2025 (ongoing): Four additional complaints—two involving trans and non-binary artists denied gender-affirming healthcare coverage under company plans, one pregnancy case, and one racial-harassment claim—are currently in mediation at the California Civil Rights Department (CRD) and the federal EEOC.

These are not anomalies. Theatre Bay Area’s 2023–2025 Workforce Equity Report, the most comprehensive survey of its kind in the region, polled 1,412 performing-arts workers and found:

• 42% had personally experienced or witnessed workplace discrimination in the prior 24 months.
• Rates spiked to 59% among BIPOC respondents, 51% among LGBTQ+ respondents, and 47% among disabled respondents.
• 61% of freelance contractors (the majority of the workforce) reported being afraid to speak up for fear of never working in the Bay Area again.

The structural reasons are painfully familiar. Most companies under 50 employees—and dozens of prominent theaters still fall into that category—have no dedicated HR department. Independent contractors, who make up roughly 70% of technical and design labor according to the same Theatre Bay Area study, are routinely misclassified, denied overtime, and excluded from health and retirement benefits. Hiring remains overwhelmingly “relationship-based,” a euphemism courts have struck down repeatedly under California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act when it results in disparate impact.

The consequences ripple beyond individual paychecks. When a trans sound designer must deadname herself on tax forms to keep insurance, or a Black stagehand is told “we already have our diversity hire,” the art itself suffers. Homogenous creative teams produce narrower work. Audiences notice. Donors, increasingly, do too.

There are bright spots—earned, in many cases, only after public firestorms:

• TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, San Jose Stage Company, and Magic Theatre now operate under IATSE and Actors’ Equity collective-bargaining agreements with iron-clad anti-discrimination clauses and third-party grievance procedures.
• CounterPulse, the African American Art & Culture Complex, and Brava For Women in the Arts have instituted disability-led hiring initiatives and public transparency reports that put most corporate DEI programs to shame.
• Since 2023, at least fourteen companies—including ACT’s Costume Shop, Z Space, and the newly reopened Lorraine Hansberry Theatre—have adopted fully blind submission and audition protocols for directors, designers, and performers.

These reforms did not appear out of goodwill alone. They followed headlines, walkouts, and the credible threat of lawsuits.

Curtain Call SF enters this landscape with a clear mandate. We will continue to deliver opening-night reviews, festival coverage, long-form artist profiles, and the definitive Bay Area performance calendar. But we will also maintain an unblinking second beat: investigative reporting on labor practices, public disclosure of every settlement and policy shift, plain-language guides to California employment law tailored for 1099 artists, and regular scorecards ranking the region’s major companies on equity metrics.

Because a city that can raise $220 million for a new wing at SFMOMA should be able to pay its stagehands fairly and without bias. A region that prides itself on birthing the Black Panthers, the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot, and the nation’s first domestic-partner registry has no excuse for operating 20th-century hiring practices in 2025.

Artists facing workplace discrimination in the Bay Area do not have to fight alone—consult an experienced San Francisco employment discrimination lawyer for a confidential case review.

The house lights are up. It’s time to open the stage door to everyone who earned their place under them.