On Broadway, summer is an unforgiving season: that time, post-Tony Awards, when shows fold in large numbers. With a half-dozen closures coming right up — some productions that failed to catch on, others that enjoyed long or commercially successful runs — that means a lot of jobs vanishing, too. For people who work in the industry, endings are part of theater’s cycle of life, a hazard to navigate.

Now, we’re not monsters. We’re not going to ask anyone who is about to be out of work to look on the bright side. But we did ask seven Broadway actors — all in current hits, but all with outright flops in their past — to tell us: What’s the best thing that ever happened to you because a show closed early? Their answers were a mix of practical savvy, glass-half-full gratitude and epiphanic philosophy.

Here are edited and condensed excerpts from those conversations.