Australia’s theatre industry is in desperate need of tax reform to keep it alive, experts have warned the federal government, after two major touring musicals and a $20m opera cancelled shows in the space of a week, citing skyrocketing costs and soft box office sales.Broadway musical Waitress, starring Rob Mills and Natalie Bassingthwaighte, announced on Sunday that it would end in Melbourne on 19 July, and will not tour to Sydney in August as planned.And Beetlejuice, which was written by Australian performer Eddie Perfect and has been staged on Broadway and the West End, announced on 20 June that it would cancel its Australian tour and end in Brisbane three weeks early. The show was originally set to go to Perth for three weeks, Adelaide for two and Sydney for seven.Both productions cited multiple factors including rising production costs, the costs of touring, cost-of-living pressures such as interest rate rises that were affecting sales, and lower consumer confidence changing ticket-buying behaviour.Eddie Perfect as Betelgeuse in Beetlejuice: The Musical. Photograph: Michelle Grace HunderCrossroads Live Australia chief executive John Frost, who produced Waitress, said in a statement that “whilst audience enthusiasm for our work remained strong, attendance levels and box office have not been sufficient to support the cost of the production”.Beetlejuice’s production company, Michael Cassel Group, said in a statement that “for a production of this scale, the current logistical realities of touring across vast distances between Australian cities have created increasing cost pressures that ultimately made continuing the run unsustainable.“While audience enthusiasm for the show has been encouraging, a more cautious consumer environment combined with the economics of moving a production of this magnitude could not be justified. It is a difficult decision, and not one we made lightly,” the statement read.