She stands in a bright spotlight, dancing tight, bouncy choreography. She wears a hand-beaded 1960s dress with glittering high heels and white gloves belting out “hey-la, hey-la, my boyfriend’s back” into a stand-up microphone in front of a sold-out crowd.This is just a typical night for Point Park alumna Candi Boyd for her role in “JerseyBoys.”Boyd, 28, is the universal swing, or understudy, for all four North American casts of “JerseyBoys,” located on Broadway and in Las Vegas, plus two national tours—one of which will be at the Benedum Center in Pittsburgh from Sept. 4 through 23.As the universal swing for all of the female roles in all four casts of “JerseyBoys,” Boyd will not know if she will be performing in Pittsburgh until the last minute.”I will be at the theater checking in backstage, but I will not be guaranteed to go on,” Boyd explained in a phone interview on Tuesday. “It sounds like a long-shot to perform, but I actually go on all the time; it’s surprising.”A native of North Hills, Boyd developed a passion for dance and musical theater at a young age. The redhead remembers seeing shows at the Benedum and identifying with Little Orphan Annie in particular. An overnight school bus-trip to New York City introduced Boyd to her first Broadway show, “Ragtime.””I could kick myself today because [“Ragtime”] is such a good show. It was Audra McDonald and Norm Lewis, who are legends and have Tonys, and I was seeing them live, and I slept through it because I was tired from the bus,” Boyd said, laughing.Boyd majored in musical theater and minored in dance with a jazz concentration at Point Park University. Boyd loved that Point Park was so “dance-centric” in addition to having a strong musical theater program.”Something about [Point Park] made it seem more comfortable and like a place where I really fit it in because of all the dance,” she said.She graduated in three years, sometimes taking as many as 23 credits in a semester, and played the lead role in “AnythingGoes” at the Pittsburgh Playhouse during her second year.Jack Allison, former head of Point Park’s musical theater department and a current member of the musical theater faculty, directed Boyd in “AnythingGoes.””We were looking for the lead role … and I just knew she could do it,” Allison said in an interview in his Lawrence Hall office on Wednesday. “She was beyond the development level of most students her age and more mature.”Boyd credits Point Park with preparing her for life in musical theater and giving her networking opportunities.”To this day, I’m a better dancer than a lot of people that I go to dance auditions with, and I feel more confident because they kicked our butts so much at Point Park in dance class,” she said. “People I do shows with [and] people I audition with are all Point Park people, and we look out for each other. It’s a combination of the training and the good people I was surrounded with and just the confidence of knowing that I got good training.”After graduating in 2006, Boyd worked as a singer and dancer for Norwegian Cruise Lines and then moved to New York City, where she auditioned and waited tables.”I did that whole ‘wake up at 6 a.m. with a bag full of dance shoes and leotards and lipstick’ thing and huffed around the city,” she said. “So really between college and ‘JerseyBoys,’ it was a lot … of auditioning.”After getting some small roles in the New York area and working on another cruise where she met her husband, Boyd got hired as the female swing for “JerseyBoys” and understudied the three female parts in the first national tour.”In ‘JerseyBoys,’ there are three women in the whole show, and they play a total of like 52 different parts, between the mother of Frankie Valli, the daughter of Frankie Valli, singers, backstage people at their shows, waitresses and reporters,” Boyd said.Boyd was responsible for knowing all of these roles and being ready to go on at a moment’s notice in case of an injury, illness, or any other problem.After two years as a swing, Boyd was hired as the universal swing—a role that came with a whole new set of challenges. Now she can be called from her Brooklyn home to any of the casts of “JerseyBoys” around the country to fill in for someone who is sick or on vacation.”All four shows are very different. The stages are different sizes, they’re laid out differently, stage traffic is extremely different and the actors all have different timing,” Boyd said.Denise Payne, of Buffalo, N.Y., plays the role of Francine in the first national tour of “JerseyBoys” and has known Boyd for nearly three years.”She’s the perfect person for that job. It’s very stressful … and you have to be very versatile,” Payne said during a phone interview Wednesday. “She’s a very great, fun person to work with … She’s not scared to make each [character] her own.”