When The Drowsy Chaperone opens in San Diego next week, the national touring cast, including Richard Vida who plays the tap dancing best man “George,” will have taken the Tony Award-winning show to more than 30 cities in one year.

While the traveling tour could be daunting for some, Vida says taking the lively, imaginative show on the road has been a highlight of his career.

“It’s hard to believe it’s been a year,” Vida said. “The show is just such a joy, and it’s been one of the best I’ve been involved with in such a long time. The company is just stellar … This has been one of the most joyous experiences I’ve had in theater, and I think that’s reflective on stage, too.”

Coming off an eight-week hiatus, Vida and the cast will bring the full Broadway show, a parody of musicals, to San Diego’s Civic Theatre Sept. 23-28.

Vida took time during his downtime in New York City to chat with the Gay & Lesbian Times about his fearless quest to perform, the addictive nature of Broadway, and why he didn’t think twice when asked to join the tour.

Gay & Lesbian Times: You have a show-stopping tap routine in The Drowsy Chaperone. Tell us a bit about your dance background.

Richard Vida: I started dancing when I was 10 years old and I began formal training at 12 with the Hartford ballet in Hartford, Conn., which was one of the top ballet companies in the country. This was, we’re talking, the early ’70s, and then I started tap dancing, seriously, at about 16 years old. It was a specialty I excelled at, and I had always loved it. When I was ready to come to New York as a dancer, I left ballet behind and started doing musical theater, and 20-some years later, here I am.

GLT: What was your introduction to musical theater?

RV: From a young age I was fixated on movie musicals, and I was fortunate we lived very close to New York City, so my grandparents would take me to see Broadway shows. The first shows I saw was A Chorus Line matinee, and Gwen Verdon and Chita Rivera in Chicago at night, and I knew then this is what I was going to do with my life. I played sports, too, as a kid. I ran track and played soccer and had the suburban upbringing, but I was very focused. I had early release from school so I could go to dance class.

GLT: Moving to New York City to pursue a career in theater or dancing or arts can be very difficult, and a bit risky. Did it ever cross your mind to pursue something else?

RV: I left school because I started working in college. I was fearless. I didn’t think of it as a risk at all. It never entered my mind that it wouldn’t work. There were certainly times I waited tables for six months here and there, but it was never a deterrent. I never not worked; I always worked. There were little lulls, which is normal in show business; at times, people forget it is a job. There is an ebb and flow. You work consistently, then, if there is a lull, you do something else and you reinvent yourself. I come from the period where dancers didn’t go to college or have any formal training until they started working, and then they went from job to job to job. And in the early ’80s, things like industrials and Madison Avenue were still going strong, and I was tap dancing and selling vacuums. That part of the business has kind of changed. There are thousands more people now coming out to audition. I used to be able to go to a chorus call in New York at [Actors’] Equity and sign up and be seen that day. Now you have to arrive at three in the morning and there’s still 2,000 people ahead of you. In the beginning, people my age would say, “I don’t know how you do it,” and now I’m saying “I don’t know how you do it.” Things have progressed, and if you really want to do it, you do it. I had no fear about it; ignorance was bliss. I was very focused and I worked very hard.

GLT: When you were a child watching A Chorus Line and Chicago, was there a moment you remember being hooked, and wanting nothing more than to pursue a career onstage?

RV: In A Chorus Line, when they’re standing in line holding head shots singing “Who am I anyway,” it was just so thrilling to me. When the lights came on, there was such energy; just such energy. I think it’s a drug for anybody in the business. In this show, The Drowsy Chaperone, it happens every night during the opening number, “Fancy Dress.” Whether you know what you’re seeing or not – it’s not some brand – some people have no idea what they’re going to see, and there’s a moment when the whole musical comes to life, and the audience realizes they’re in on a really big parody, and they’re in for an evening of laughs. The energy really comes from the audience when they immediately realize, at the same moment every night, they’re immersed in this show. And it’s such a drug – you feel the waft of energy from the audience and they say, “OK, we’re with you; we’re going to go with you on this ride.” I felt that as an audience member when I was a kid, and I still feel it as an actor now.

GLT: What attracted you to the show, The Drowsy Chaperone, and to the role of George?

RV: I was attracted to the show when I saw it was so human. The Man in Chair [character] is reflective of everybody; we all have something we do on our own time when we’re all alone, whether it’s putting on musicals or eating an entire pint of Häagen Dazs. We all have that secret something we do that makes us feel good that we don’t share with a lot of people. That’s why it’s so sweet when he puts the record on; to this day, I do it, we all do it – we put a record on and we dance in our apartment. Everybody wants to be that performer; it’s something they love. It really comes to life, this entire fantasy, and you share and experience it with the entire theater. It creates family and it creates a dialogue. In most shows, there’s no dialogue between the actor and the audience, and it’s presented in two and a half hours, and that’s it. In The Drowsy Chaperone, the Man in Chair breaks the fourth wall, and onstage, I can hold for a laugh, or look at the audience and share the experience and the magic of this show. It’s so smartly written, too. There are very few holes in it. At the end of it, I have people saying, “This is the best show, the best fun.” And we experience it together; I’m not performing for you, we’re performing and talking to each other. That’s why people are taken by it. When they offered for me to go on the road with the show, there wasn’t even a second thought.

GLT: The show, being a parody and quite self-reflective of musicals, is quite entertaining for fans of musical theater. Does it translate to average audience members, who may not be fans of musicals?

RV: This is a great date show. Usually on Saturday nights, women drag their boyfriends or their husbands to the theater and they sleep through it, or they sit wishing they were at the game. Collectively, I’ve had men say, “I didn’t want to come see this, but it was fantastic.” There’s something for everybody. People who don’t usually like musical theater are enraptured in the story, and it’s grounded in the acting craft – we’re not BS-ing anybody so they buy it. No one is bored. The only way to describe the show is surprising, and the surprises get bigger and bigger, and it just keeps exploding and by the end you’ve had a tumultuous great time. And then you have this poignant ending and you realize it’s his [the Man in Chair’s] life. The show reflects life.