The New York stage has some notable nostalgia this year: More than a half-dozen performers in significant roles made their Broadway debuts as children. Some were in hits and some were in flops; they experienced joy and (in one case) trauma. A few have appeared onstage with regularity, while others pursued music or film and are now returning. Here they reflect on those early experiences.

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Nick Jonas

Nick Jonas was just 8 when he landed a part as a Tiny Tim understudy in a 2000 production of “A Christmas Carol” at Madison Square Garden (Frank Langella was Scrooge). A year later, at 9, he made his Broadway debut as Little Jake in a revival of “Annie Get Your Gun” then starring Reba McEntire.

He did two more Broadway shows in rapid succession: At 10 he played Chip, a teacup, in “Beauty and the Beast,” and at 11 he played Gavroche, a street child, in “Les Misérables.”

Though he became a successful pop star in the years that followed, the stage kept calling: At 19, he returned to Broadway in “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.” And this spring, at 32, he is returning in the first Broadway production of Jason Robert Brown’s much-loved “The Last Five Years.”

Like many of the actors interviewed here, Jonas said that in theater he found a group of peers who understood him in a way that classmates often did not. At school, Jonas said, “I definitely felt like I was strange to them.” But onstage, he said, “I finally felt like I was around my people.”