We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Melissa Victor. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Melissa below.

Melissa, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Do you think your parents have had a meaningful impact on you and your journey?

So often times you hear stories from creatives where there family says things like “Hey maybe you should get a REAL job?” or the famous quote from Sister Act 2 “Singing does not pay the bills, singing does not put food on the table”. During my toddler years, my mom knew that I was going to be a performer. If you ask her, apparently I would watch Disney’s Beauty and the Beast and get on my rocking horse and pretend to be Belle and would shout “Let’s go Phillipe!” while watching. I also begged my mom to be on my church’s youth choir, so as soon as I turned 5 years old I was able to join. Growing up singing in church ignited my love of music and my mom made sure that I was at every single choir rehearsal. My choir director at the time, Sylvia Hardison, invited me to her performing arts summer camp and that’s where I was first introduced to the world of musical theatre. I had been in dance class for some time but learning at a young age that I could do something that allowed me to sing and dance at the same time was all I needed. My mother never told me that being a musical theatre performer was out of reach, or silly, or an irresponsible career choice. She supported my Broadway dreams to the fullest. So much that she made sure I stayed in voice lessons, dance class, piano lesson because if I was going to pursue then I needed to be trained and learn how to do it well. I am thankful that my mom showed to every show, every recital, sewed the ribbon on my ballet shoes, made sure our home piano was in tune. She really created an environment for me to thrive and hone my skill so that I could be the succesful performer that I am today. She also encouraged me to write, and once I finally took her advice and merged my worlds of creative writing and musical theatre, my podcast Stoopkid Stories was born. My mom did it right by always saying “Yes of course you can do it, let’s make it happen”.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am musical theatre performer, currently performing in the Off Broadway revival of Little Shop of Horrors. I am also the creator and host of a children’s podcast called “Stoopkid Stories”. My love for singing, dancing and acting started at a very young age; growing up in Baltimore I was a part of various performing arts programs throughout the city which really ignited my interest. My first professional musical theatre gig was in 2009, I was a freshman in college pursuing a Bachelor’s of Music in Musical Theatre and I booked the role “Little Inez” in Hairspray at Toby’s Dinner Theatre. It was a really big deal at the time because I was really the only student at the time who was working professionally and still going to all my classes. I realized then that my career had started and I could really do this. So I worked in the regional theatre market for many years, and went back and forth from NYC to chase my big Broadway dream. Around the end of 2019 I was feeling a little creatively unfulfilled and I didn’t know what to do next. I was booking and auditions were slowing down and felt stuck, so I prayed. And that’s when God told me to start a podcast. I didn’t listen because those instructions sounded silly to me. And then it came to me 2 more times, and each time the instruction became more specific and vision of the podcast became much more clear. God told me to start a podcast, writing stories for Black kids about Black kids. So I decided to be obedient, even though I was scared and launched Stoopkid Stories at the top of 2020. 400,000 total downloads later, the podcast is still reaching kids and families all around the world. At this point in my life I am creatively fulfilled in so many ways. I get to write stories and inspire kids during the day and perform on stage at night. It’s a dream.

Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

When you are training to be a singer or a dancer or an actor, there is so much emphasis on the craft and not enough emphasis on the business side of things. I learned how to navigate auditions, pick the best audition cut, learn choreo quickly and all of that. But when I started my podcast and became a producer, I had a major learning curve. My entire career has been creative, so management and administration and delegating and business was all foreign to me and I had to, and still am, figuring this all out on my own. There’s no manual that tells you how to be a producer, especially in the Kids and Family podcast space. So I find myself piecing together advice and information from different directors and producers and creators and figuring out how this all works for me in my lane. I wish for creatives and artists we had more conversations about building the business and operating as business.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

There are 2 things that are most rewarding to me being an artist. 1. Feeling my family’s support, specifically my mom and my sister who spent hours and hours sitting at long chorus concerts and musicals in my younger years. 2. Hearing from kids and young artists about how much they are inspired by the work that I do. I really do believe that a big part of my purpose in life is inspiring the generation behind me.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.stoopkidstories.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/melly_music www.instagram.com/stoopkidstories
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/MelissaVictor
• Twitter: @stoopkidstories

Image Credits
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