When Erica Lynn Schwartz escorted visitors through the Emerson Colonial Theatre to show off its reopening back in 2018, crew members were swarming around a grandiose set with a giant elephant on one side of the stage and a windmill on the other.
They were among the roughly 100 people who came to Boston for 17 weeks that year to work on the musical “Moulin Rouge” before it headed to Broadway. Thousands who attended the shows — previews for the Broadway run — provided an even larger economic impact: More than half visited from out of state, collectively spending millions at local restaurants and hotels. Those stats helped Schwartz, then the Colonial’s manager, make the case back then as she lobbied for tax credits that could support her industry, and bring more big-budget productions here.
Six years later, “Moulin Rouge” is still delighting audiences on Broadway. And Schwartz, now in a national role at Ambassador Theatre Group, is still pushing for those tax credits.
She may finally get her big break this summer, with the House of Representatives poised to include $5 million in annual tax credits for live theater productions bound for New York City or national tours in its economic development bill as soon as next week. The measure would provide a 35 percent credit for in-state employment costs and 25 percent for other expenses.
The House has approved similar measures in previous legislative sessions. This time, the governor is a fan, too. Charlie Baker was not, and Deval Patrick vetoed one such proposal when it landed on his desk a decade ago. But Maura Healey? She’s cheering from the front row.
The ripple effects can be enormous, said Lieutenant Governor Kim Driscoll, in part because theater fans often go out to eat before or after the show. What’s more, the former Salem mayor notes, it’s a way for state government to stoke local economies beyond Boston and Cambridge. Those are just two of the reasons why the Healey administration included the tax breaks in its version of the economic development bill that’s now advancing in the House.
This Beacon Hill saga is starting to feel like a show that’s been running longer than the “Lion King.”
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Few know that better than Joe Spaulding, the recently retired president of the Boch Center in Boston. He embarked on this crusade soon after the Legislature adopted the state’s film tax credits nearly 20 years ago, figuring his sector should have something similar. It took some time to gain traction with the Legislature, but then Patrick’s end-of-session veto in 2014 sent the effort back to square one.
Meanwhile, Spaulding watched friends in other states enjoy more success. Eight other states now offer these credits, and local operators say it’s getting harder to land shows as a result. In particular, Spaulding says, the Proctors Theatre in Schenectady, N.Y., and the Providence Performing Arts Center have enjoyed tax credit-fueled booms in big-budget productions.
Since Ambassador Theatre Group took over the Colonial in 2017, the company has taken the lead on the quest that Spaulding began, and worked with Representative David Biele and Senator Nick Collins to refile the bill this legislative session. Other theater managers around the state are keeping the drumbeat going — from Nick Paleologos at the Berkshire Theatre Group to Troy Siebels at the Hanover in Worcester to Casey Soward at the Cabot in Beverly — and hoping to capture some of the business now going to upstate New York or Rhode Island. Regular tour stops might touch down in a city for a week or two. But a national tour launch can involve several months of preparation and shows, along with millions of dollars in local spending.
No national tour has launched in Massachusetts in recent memory. Meanwhile, 20 have debuted in Rhode Island and upstate New York since incentives began in those states, Colonial manager Joey Riddle testified at a legislative hearing in April, and that Boston lost a show that was supposed to come here — “The Wiz” — for the same reason last year. (It went to Baltimore instead because of new incentives there.)
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Driscoll said the administration hears from local operators who say they need these credits to compete with the cities and states that already offer them. Louisiana began offering incentives for plays and musicals in 2007 and, as with the film tax credits, others quickly followed.
Sure, some Broadway-bound shows have originated here recently, thanks to the Colonial, which is run by an international company that helps finance those productions, and to Harvard’s American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, because the ART team led by Diane Paulus produces many of their own shows. Back in 2018, “Jagged Little Pill” drew crowds to the ART while “Moulin Rouge” played at ATG’s Colonial — where the pre-Broadway production of “Queen of Versailles” debuts next month.
Proponents of the tax credits say a modest amount of credits would draw many more shows to the state, including off-Broadway launches and national tours; without them, Massachusetts often isn’t even considered for many launches.
The co-chairs of the Legislature’s economic development committee, Representative Jerry Parisella and Senator Barry Finegold, have already endorsed the tax credits, and Parisella says he’s confident the measure will make it into the House’s economic development bill. He sees the reports of national tours kicking off in places like Elmira, N.Y., and would prefer to bring them here.
The Senate, which often takes a tougher stance on business-related tax credits, could be a different story. Finegold believes the tax credits could help stoke the state’s “cultural economy” and hopes his colleagues will concur. But Senator Jamie Eldridge, a longtime critic of industry-specific incentives, argues that the economic benefits for the film credits have been overstated, and aren’t worth the tens of millions that the state sacrifices each year; he worries a similar result could occur should the Legislature adopt the live production tax credits.
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With a July 31 deadline on the horizon, there won’t be much time for negotiating if the Senate is averse. Will legislative leaders finally get this show on the road? We may have to wait until the final act next month to find out.
Jon Chesto can be reached at jon.chesto@globe.com. Follow him @jonchesto.