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.”
Jonas, who was born in Texas and raised in New Jersey, said an adult who influenced him was the actor Rob McClure, who was an understudy in “I’m Not Rappaport” in 2002 when Jonas was in “Beauty and the Beast.” McClure, who lived near the Jonas family, would drive Nick to the city when they both had shows, and they would talk about acting, do improv bits and listen to tenors.
They would also watch videos of Broadway bloopers — comforting, because Jonas has long clung to the memory of missing a cue while in “Annie Get Your Gun.” “I literally had to bolt down from my fourth-story dressing room down to the stage and left Reba McEntire and Brent Barrett waiting for little Jake to arrive, and he didn’t,” Jonas said. “But, in the theme of that show, the show must go on. We have to adapt.”
Now, as he prepares for the intense theater schedule, he says he wants to reconnect with the “joy and freedom” he felt as a child actor. “Back then it was just fun — I just got to do a thing I loved,” he said. “I think that for me to do my best work and to have the best experience I need to be loose and as carefree as I was then.”
Nick Jonas will star in “The Last Five Years” starting March 18 at the Hudson Theater.
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Sadie Sink
The 2012 Broadway revival of “Annie” was underway when cast members started to get sick, and the production needed more understudies. That’s how Sadie Sink, at 10, landed a gig as a standby on Broadway — she was a Texan, but she was in New York because her brother was performing in “Elf,” and she knew “Annie” because she had starred in a production in Houston at Theater Under the Stars.
“I remember being at the Palace Theater, doing the same old ‘Annie’ songs I’d been singing my whole life at that point, and they cast me just to join for a bit as a placeholder while they needed extra coverage, but that ended up extending, and then that turned into being Annie,” she said. “It was a lot on my family, because moving from Texas to New York is not easy financially and logistically, but it just kind of happened, and I just remember it being this huge whirlwind of excitement.”
For a while, she was home-schooled, but she made plenty of friends because the “Annie” cast was filled with young girls who also loved theater. When she was 12 she took on another Broadway role, playing a young Elizabeth, the future queen of England, in “The Audience,” starring Helen Mirren.
Those early Broadway parts “really set a good foundation for me, and a good level of discipline,” she said.
Sink went back to public school, and in ninth grade she was cast as Max Mayfield in Netflix’s “Stranger Things.” She skipped college to focus on that series, and this spring, at 22, she’ll return to Broadway in “John Proctor Is the Villain,” a comedy that interrogates “The Crucible” through the eyes of high schoolers.
Sink says she is ready for it. “There are some nerves that come with it, too, just cause it’s been a while, but it’s going to be super-rewarding just to re-approach it as an adult now and make new memories,” she said. “That’s just what I’m meant to do, and I feel very lucky that I somehow figured that out at a really young age.”
Sadie Sink will star in “John Proctor Is the Villain” starting March 20 at the Booth Theater.
At 10, Christian Slater hit the road. His father was an actor and his mother was a casting director, and Slater, growing up in New York City, was discovered when the director of a Broadway-bound production of “The Music Man” noticed him on a cable access show on which his mother was being interviewed.
Looked after by guardians, Slater traveled the country for months playing Winthrop, the little brother of Marian the librarian. “I was having the best time of my life,” he said. “It was incredible.”
So in 1980, Slater made his Broadway debut in “The Music Man,” and that was followed by roles in “Copperfield,” “Macbeth” and “Merlin.” He attended schools set up for child performers.
“Honestly, I loved it — I’ve always loved it,” he said. “Other than dealing with some crazy adults, for the most part it was a pretty smooth experience. I had guardians, I had tutors, I had other kids who were also in the shows who I could spend time with.”
He became well known for films including “Heathers” and “True Romance,” but he also struggled with substance abuse during a tumultuous early adulthood.
“I definitely felt the need to find ways to escape from my own head, and from some of the uncomfortable stuff, and unfortunately when you’re looking to escape you find substances you do that with,” he said. “They work in the beginning, and then they end up biting you in the ass somewhere else down the line, and hopefully you survive it and come out the other side a little bit wiser and a little bit clearer about who you want to be in life.”
He has done a couple of Broadway shows as an adult — “Side Man” and “The Glass Menagerie” — and now, at 55, he is starring Off Broadway in a New Group production of Sam Shepard’s “Curse of the Starving Class.” His character is the family patriarch and an abusive alcoholic.
“It is funny to grow into older characters, and to be playing the dad,” Slater said. “I’m certainly able to tap into aspects of my own life and my own path.”
Christian Slater is currently starring in “Curse of the Starving Class” at Pershing Square Signature Center.
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Alex Winter
Before Alex Winter became one of filmdom’s most famous slackers — starring opposite Keanu Reeves in the “Bill & Ted” movies — he was performing on Broadway. In 1978, when he was 13, he played Anna’s son in a revival of “The King and I,” and in 1979 he starred in “Peter Pan” as John Darling.
That period of his life was traumatic because, he said, he was being sexually abused by someone he has not named. “During the ‘King and I’ era I ended up in a really bad, predatory situation that was prolonged, that took some work to get through,” he said.
He still considers his early childhood career a positive. “These are societal, systemic issues,” he said. “They’re not showbiz issues. And in fact, I would argue that the show itself and the theater itself was a refuge for me — it was safe, it was lovely, it was magical.”
Winter, whose parents were dancers, and who lived in Montclair, N.J., when working on Broadway, has spent a lot of time thinking about child performers; in fact, in 2020 he made an HBO documentary on the subject called “Showbiz Kids.”
“What childhood is ever just idyllic?” he said. “I played. I ran. We would skateboard on the stage between shows. We would have baseball games. I had issues because I was exposed to stuff — you were in an adultified space, and so there are dangers there — there are stressors involved in being in entertainment that young.”
He said he believes conditions have improved. “There is a lot more language and protection in place for children in the industry now than there was when I was in the industry, and a lot of it has to do with the #MeToo movement opening up dialogue.”
A portion of his career has been focused on directing, but next fall he plans to return to Broadway to star alongside Reeves in a revival of “Waiting for Godot.”
“Acting onstage is in my bones. I’ve always been very comfortable doing it. I got onstage at 5 years old, and it’s something I have good feelings for,” said Winter, who is now 59. “But it will be a monumental thing for me emotionally.”
Alex Winter will star in “Waiting for Godot” on Broadway in the fall.
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Gracie Lawrence
Gracie Lawrence’s first Broadway show was a famous flop — a revival of Neil Simon’s “Brighton Beach Memoirs” that lasted just a week beyond opening night. But she was only 12, and, she said, “It all went a little over my head.”
“I was having this euphoric moment, and then when it ended, everyone else was grappling with more adult realities than I was. I just had to go back to going through real puberty.”
The 2009 play, which had 34 performances including previews, was formative. She remembers watching the older actors get into character just before the curtain went up. So she developed her own preparation strategy — she would roll her eyes just before the show began, to snap into character as the snarky girl she was playing. She remembers proudly sharing that discovery with Jessica Hecht, one of the show’s performers.
Her artistic life then took a turn. She and one of her brothers formed a band, Lawrence, and for the past decade she has spent much of her time touring.
But Lawrence, who grew up in New York and whose father is a filmmaker, has continued to act, including with a role on the Max series “The Sex Lives of College Girls.” And this spring she will return to Broadway to play the singer Connie Francis in “Just in Time,” a musical about another singer, Bobby Darin.
“So much of my life has been around the question, ‘Will I ever return to Broadway?’ because it was this wildly significant thing in my childhood,” Lawrence, now 27, said. “I’m not chill about it at all. It’s one of the craziest, coolest things that’s ever happened to me — I’m just having this wild experience that I didn’t know if I’d ever have again.”
Gracie Lawrence will be featured in “Just in Time” starting March 28 at Circle in the Square.
When he was 8, his mother jokes, Nicholas Barasch asked whether she had found him an agent. By 10, he had gotten his big break, playing a child who sang “Somewhere” in a 2009 Broadway revival of “West Side Story.”
It was fun and nerve-racking and sure, sometimes things went wrong. “One time I was having a full giggle fit backstage,” he said, “and we’re getting closer and closer to my entrance, and I remember standing in the wings and telling myself, ‘If you do not pull yourself together, your career is over.’”
Barasch, who grew up in Westchester County, N.Y., did pull himself together, and he has been performing ever since. At 14 he was in Broadway’s “The Mystery of Edwin Drood.”
“It was like being in master classes, and it was nice because when you’re the kid everyone handles you a little more gently,” he said. “But also, the paradox is, I was also expected to perform like a professional adult.”
Barasch, whose great-grandmother performed in vaudeville and whose grandfather wrote two Broadway plays, was back on Broadway at 17, playing a delivery boy in a revival of “She Loves Me.” He has done some screen work (“Riverdale”) and toured (as Orpheus) with “Hadestown,” and this spring, at 26, he has his biggest Broadway role yet, as Frederic in “Pirates! The Penzance Musical.”
“I sometimes long for the freedom and the innocence that came with being 10 and not knowing a single thing about the craft or the industry,” he said. “But at the same time, I’ve had to unlearn some of the hyperdiscipline that I had as a kid, and just relax more and trust myself.”
Nicholas Barasch will be featured in “Pirates! The Penzance Musical” starting April 4 at the Todd Haimes Theater.
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Kevin Csolak
As far back as Kevin Csolak can remember, he wanted to dance. He grew up in Flemington, N.J., where his mother runs a performing arts studio; at 5, he started entering dance competitions.
Shortly after turning 11, he landed a part dancing on Broadway in “How the Grinch Stole Christmas!” (He was one of several “Little Whos” in Whoville.)
Performing was fun. School, not so much. “It was ‘twinkletoes!’ and ‘Broadway Boy!’” he said.
He tried playing baseball, but was missing too many games. He stopped talking to classmates about his afternoons and evenings in the city.
“It felt like I was missing out — like I was inside a dance class while the kids were outside playing ball and running around,” he said. “But at the same time, coming into the city and performing and auditioning and meeting people that were so like me — who had this unspeakable passion for this art form — that filled me up.”
He remembers watching Patrick Page, who played the Grinch. “It was my first time experiencing an actor who was offstage so sweet and so nice, and then gets onstage — he transformed,” Csolak said. “That’s where I was like, ‘Oh, wow.’”
In the years since, he has performed on television (“Boardwalk Empire”), film (“West Side Story”) and stage (“The Outsiders”), and now, at 29, is featured in the Broadway revival of “Gypsy.” Csolak plays Tulsa, a young man who yearns to dance. “Tulsa is definitely just a big old kid who gets to sing and dance and dream,” Csolak said. “That’s what I dedicate every night to, hopefully inspiring a kid out there who has some sort of dream.”
Kevin Csolak is currently performing in “Gypsy” at the Majestic Theater.
