In '92, I got my first Broadway show as a performer - 'Crazy for You.' I was in the ensemble. In fact, I was in eight Broadway shows as a dancer. Seven of them were original shows. That's how I learned to create something from the ground up.

I look around at people who had success so early and then didn't know what to do with themselves.

I moved to New York and couldn't get a job as an actor. And waited tables for so long.

I'm from San Diego. My parents weren't involved in theater, but my mother encouraged my interest in it. She bought me the cassette tape to 'A Chorus Line' and she took me and a friend out of school one day and drove us up to L.A. for a matinee. Afterward, we ate in the cafeteria. I was in junior high school. She saw the direction I was going in.

I like bringing comedy to musicals. That's what's so much fun about this show, because the writers are so based in comedy. I've been able to make it dance and sing ? and keep building things ? in a way they're not used to. For me to be able to get people to laugh in dance is huge because it doesn't always happen.

Sometimes you feel like people go, 'Oh, he just does funny dances,' or 'That's cute.' It drives me a little crazy when someone does a dance number where all they do is kick to their head for five minutes, and everyone's like, 'That choreography is amazing.' It takes a lot to choreograph a number that also gets laughs in it.

Bouncing ideas off people when you're thinking up comedy is great.

I was in eighth grade when I did my first Junior Theatre show. I was in 'Annie Get Your Gun' as a dancing Indian.

I went to UCLA for a year and a quarter. There were too many students at UCLA interested in what I was interested in, and they couldn't accommodate all of us. I wasn't allowed to take voice or dance, only theater and acting. So I saved my money and, at 19, moved to New York.

It blows me away that my parents, they really weren't much into theater, but they recognized that in me. When I think about the things they did to support that, I'm blown away.