Just days before the Canadian cirque nouveau group FLIP Fabrique was scheduled to tumble, sing and fly across the Merrill Auditorium stage this week, the event’s presenter, Portland Ovations, announced that the performance would be canceled “due to issues in securing performance visas.”

Minutes later, the organization announced that two shows scheduled for March 3 with another act, Les Ballets Africains, the national dance company of Guinea, would also be canceled because of issues in the visa approval process.

“I’ve been doing this work for 30 years and have seen the visa process get more complicated and expensive during that time,” said Aimée M. Petrin, executive and artistic director for Portland Ovations.

The last time she had to cancel a show for visa reasons was in 2022.

The number of canceled and rescheduled shows across Maine is low, but presenters, artists’ agents and immigration attorneys who work on performance visas agree that high costs, processing delays and new restrictions from the Trump administration have combined to reduce the number of international performers coming to stages in Maine and elsewhere in the U.S., even when those performers live close by in Canada.

Representatives for FLIP Fabrique and Les Ballets Africains did not respond to requests for comment, so the specific issues they ran into in the approval process are not clear. FLIP Fabrique’s performances scheduled for later this week in Amherst, Massachusetts, were also canceled just days ahead of time.

“It looks like if their visas are eventually approved, they’ll miss the first leg of their tour” in the Eastern U.S., Petrin said.

A LENGTHY AND SOMETIMES COSTLY APPROVAL PROCESS

The first step for a professional artist who wants to perform in the U.S. is to petition through U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. USCIS’ website says the processing time for petitions is about nine months and some cases will take longer.

“Years ago, these cases would get through in two to three weeks, no problem,” said Eileen Morrison, an attorney based in Massachusetts whose practice is almost entirely composed of artists and athletes seeking temporary permission to work in the U.S. Now she has clients who have waited a year for approval.

“To have to plan a year in advance really flies in the face of the way a lot of arts and entertainment people work,” Morrison said.

The alternative, she and others have found, is to pay a premium processing fee, but the price tag for that rose during the Biden administration to $2,805 and will go up to $2,965 on March 1. 

“That’s not the reason premium processing was created,” she said. It was intended for a truly exigent situation, like an opera having to replace someone at the last minute, she said, but now, “they’re making it impossible for people to file without using premium processing.”

The total cost of a successful petition could be upwards of $6,000, including attorney’s fees, and even expedited processing does not ensure that permission will come through within a specific period, because application reviewers can ask for more information that extends their timelines.

Performers with Canadian citizenship do not have to take the next step to get visas at a U.S. consular office, but performers from other countries do, and the Trump administration has required that they go to their home countries to obtain those visas instead of getting them in a third country where they’re working, Morrison said. Petrin noted that FLIP Fabrique includes people from Canada, Switzerland and Argentina among its performers and support staff who are critical to the cirque show.

“This is not a performance where someone can be hired day of, for safety reasons. Their technicians need to run the lighting and the rigging,” she said.

Other than high costs and long wait times for processing applications, restrictions put in place by the Trump administration recently added another barrier for artists from dozens of countries. USCIS did not respond to an interview request, but the new restrictions appear to have affected Les Ballets Africains, the dance group from Guinea that was set to perform in Portland.

“It’s sort of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” said Irena McQuarrie from Scarborough, who had planned on attending one of their shows. She’s disappointed to miss out on the opportunity to see the group perform in the U.S. and to see a type of drumming and dancing that’s important to her come to Maine.

“I was going to bring my partner who’s not as involved in these things as I am, so he could see the things that I’m so passionate about,” she said.

Guinea is on a list of countries for which the Trump administration recently paused all visa issuances, and Petrin said the dance group’s visas were denied at the U.S. consulate. Other performances that Les Ballets Africains had scheduled this month in Florida, New Jersey and New York were also canceled, according to the venues’ websites.

CAUTION, DELAYS FOR OTHER ARTS PRESENTERS

Portland Ovations is one of the largest performing arts presenters in Maine. Among others who regularly bring international acts to the state, some have had issues with getting approvals on time and others have not experienced issues. 

Representatives for the Strand Theatre in Rockland, along with One Longfellow Square, the State Theatre and Thompson’s Point in Portland all said they have not had to cancel or postpone performances because of delays or denials of visa applications.

However, Cathy Sherrill, executive director of the Opera House at Boothbay Harbor, said over the past couple of years she has had to cancel half a dozen performances because of visa issues for musicians trying to come to the U.S. from Canada, the United Kingdom and Spain. 

“I’ve heard repeatedly from musicians and their management that the U.S. is now very expensive to tour due to visas, and that for many it simply doesn’t make sense when they can tour elsewhere in the world,” she said. “In the end it’s our collective loss.”

A Canadian group Sherrill is working with filed its petitions last May, she said, and is still waiting for approval. In the two previous decades, she added, the Boothbay Opera House never had to cancel a show because of travel permissions.

“You’re talking about more than a year to get a visa to come from Canada to Maine — it’s outrageous,” she said.

Canceling shows is costly for artists and venues. While performers can lose the thousands of dollars spent on visa processing fees and travel, Petrin at Portland Ovations estimates her organization has lost about $50,000 in ticket revenue for each show that was canceled, plus more than $5,000 in staff time, marketing money and other expenses related to scheduling and promoting a show.

“For smaller venues, it becomes extremely hard to predict if someone will get their visa in time for a performance,” said Morrison, the attorney.

Sherrill said she “used to never think about visas,” but now she asks if performers have their applications approved before she feels comfortable booking and promoting them to patrons.

The result is that some presenters are less enthusiastic about bringing in talent from abroad.

“We’ve been focusing on hiring national artists,” said Allison Page, marketing and communications manager for the Portland Symphony Orchestra, which had to postpone a performance by Canadian conductor Alexandre da Costa until October because of the length of time it would take him to get permission to perform here. He applied last October, and is still waiting for approval.

“There’s a wonderful array of talented artists located nationally that don’t have the same risks of hiring internationally.”