Victoria Platt, minister, actor, somatic experiencing practitioner, and energy balancing therapist remembers going to her older sister’s performance classes at Brooklyn College. Platt says those experiences in her early childhood drew her to the friendship, fun, and community that can be found in the arts.
Platt says her mother was also a performer and she taught singing lessons to the kids in their Queens, New York neighborhood. “One day she was coaching one of my friends for ‘Annie,’ and I went with my friend [to the audition] for moral support, and they pulled me up on stage with everybody,” said Platt.
“They said, ‘When we point to you — and there was like sixty kids — you sing eight bars of The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow,’” continued Platt. “They pointed to me, and I sang, and when I heard my voice fill up the room, I was like, ‘aaaaah.’ I booked that job, too.”
Platt’s experience in the theater has endured through the years. Her stage credits include “Venice,” “Sammy,” “Pippin,” “Jelly’s Last Jam,” “Dreamgirls,” and more.
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She is also recognized for her work in film and television. Some of Platt’s screen credits are “My Girlfriend’s Back,” “Cover,” and “Flip the Script.” A few of her TV projects are “Good Trouble,” “NCIS,” “Days of Our Lives,” “Star-Crossed,” “The Gates,” “Guiding Light,” and “All My Children.”
Throughout her career and life, Platt says spirituality has always been present in both. She remembers growing up with her Black mother, who was a Jehovah’s Witness, and her white father, who was a non-practicing Jew and agnostic.
“We knew when Jewish holidays would come up because he would say, ‘Today’s Rosh Hashanah,’ and that would be the extent of it,” said Platt. “And because my mother was Jehovah’s Witness, we didn’t celebrate really anything — not Christmas, not Easter, not birthdays… none of that.”
Curiously, Platt says spirituality became a significant part of her life when she was around eight years old, when she booked the musical “New Orleans: The Storyville Musical,” by Toni Morrison. Platt describes her character in “Storyville” as a “trick baby” in a brothel.
She explains that some of the performers in the production were deep into their spirituality, and they were responsible for introducing her to transcendental meditation. Transcendental meditation or “TM” is a form of silent meditation.
“They exposed me to journaling… They shared with me some of their practices, and I would meditate with them,” said Platt. “So, at home, I had an agnostic father, a Jehovah’s Witness mother, and then I was exposed to this other world of spirituality.”
She says this opened her to seeing how different types of beliefs between religion and spirituality could co-exist together.
“I saw myself in a much larger way, and I saw the world and everything in a much larger way,” said Platt. “That was my introduction to spirituality, and I took it from there. It was like a shot in the arm for me, and I never stopped from that moment on — literally from eight years old.”
Platt says she was chanting, burning candles, praying, and when she turned twelve, she told her mother that “Being a Jehovah’s Witness is not a language I understood God through.”
Platt believes it does not matter what faith system you use to communicate with God, and she knows that many people, particularly those who practice Christianity, will attempt to hold her accountable for that belief. But she maintains her position.
“We have to find space for all of it [spirituality/religion],” she explained. “There is no one path to God, except the path to God, and that’s going to come in many ways.”
Platt says the goal of her work as a somatic experiencing practitioner — a nonconventional type of therapy used to treat trauma and stress-related disorders — is to help others understand that transcendence to spirituality travels through the physical form, first, and everything in life that goes along with it.
“First, we must go through the body, not above it, not go around it, not suppress it, not make it submissive. We need to go through it,” said Platt. “We need to figure out what is the hard feeling, what is the mind thinking, what is the body sensing, and once those three things we get into alignment we get into some coherence.”
She continued, “That narrows us into our space to be able to experience our divinity… So, I help women, and everyone, but mostly women in dealing with oppression, feeling dismissed, patriarchy, and what it means to be in our divine feminine, and also what it means to be in our divine masculine.”
Platt says these principles are especially important to Black women working in the entertainment industry because this industry does not see the feminine energy of Black women unless you fit into a certain type.
She says that type is usually women of African descent who look more akin to a European ideal.
Even then, says Platt, being of a lighter skin tone and/or having a finer grade of hair can be categorized as well-spoken, weak, fragile, or even spiteful and arrogant.
In contrast, Platt says those in entertainment decision-making positions sometimes classify darker-hued women as strong, the earthmother, or the wise one, to name just a few.
“So, what I work to do, in my own practice through this work as an actor, is bring those pieces of myself that they [entertainment decision makers] don’t see to the fore,” said Platt.
“TV is stereotypes. The second they see us they want to know, ‘Do you fit these stereotypes,’ and knowing that if you don’t fit into those stereotypes, you might not get the job. So, that is the balance of playing the game and giving them the stereotype,” she added.
Platt says her goal is to fuse all parts of a woman’s being, and to let that be what she presents; but she acknowledges that this can be challenging for Black women.
“White-bodied women get to be weak and strong in the same sentence. For us, ‘no,’ we are not allowed to be that. We must fit into these very narrow boxes… my ministry ain’t in convincing nobody,” said Platt.
She resumed, “What I am doing is living my truth, whatever that is. And in order to be out there and be visible, and to get work, and pay my bills, and qualify for [Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists] insurance.”
“I’m going to show up in ways sometimes you expect, and also the second you let me in that door, you’re getting a lot of that other stuff, too,” she concluded.
