NEW YORK -- Micky Dolenz studied architecture in college and was fully prepared for a life planning buildings, and not rock 'n' roll immortality, though he was auditioning for television shows between classes.
"I figured if architecture didn't work out, I could fall back on show biz," Dolenz says. "That was Plan B: acting and singing."
Plan A, though, faded when he nailed an audition in 1966 to join "The Monkees," the TV comedy based on the antics of a rock group modeled after the Beatles.
"I'm not a fool," Dolenz says. "I knew the power and possibility of a series on television. And the train just took off."
Still, there's more than a little architecture in his latest project: The role of the scheming Prime Minister Zoser in "Aida," Disney's cartoony take on the Verdi opera. Zoser, after all, has a thing for building pyramids.
"Yeah," Dolenz says after considering the matter. "I guess in the end I've managed to combine both those dreams."
Dolenz, 58, joins Michelle T. Williams (of Destiny's Child), Will Chase, and Lisa Brescia, among others, in the Broadway version of "Aida," the Tony-winning musical with music by Elton John and lyrics by Tim Rice.
The rock musical tells the story of a love triangle involving Aida, a Nubian princess forced into slavery; Amneris, an Egyptian princess; and Radames, the soldier they both love.
Dolenz, who has been with a touring version of the show for six months, plays Radames's father and contributes songs like "Another Pyramid" and "Like Father Like Son."
"It's been an incredible opportunity for me to do something that is so -- I mean, God love the Monkees -- different," Dolenz says. "There is nothing like getting out there on a legitimate stage and having to really pull it off."
Dolenz, who as a child starred in the TV show "Circus Boy," is no stranger to the musical stage, having toured with companies of "Grease," "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum," "The Point," and "Tom Sawyer." He also wrote the book for, and directed, "Bugsy Malone" for the London stage.
Yet even some of his friends didn't know he had the musical chops for "Aida."
"No one does," he replies cheerily. "And to some degree I didn't know. There wasn't anything that I did in my life professionally that demanded that kind of singing."
Paul J. Smith, the show's production stage manager who worked with Dolenz in "Grease," says the performer has a voice as powerful as his ego is small.
"There's no question he wants to be part of the company. He doesn't want to be Micky Dolenz in `Aida.' He wants to be right in the character," Smith says. "He is not at all a diva."
Dolenz sees a connection between his current work and the one that forever will be linked with his name -- the Monkees, whose albums and TV show were chart toppers in the late 1960s.