When Benjamin Platt was 6 years old, he decided to change his name to Cheetah because his hair was “real long like a tail.” At least, that’s how he tells it—rather, sings it—on stage alongside his two brothers, Cy and Boone, amidst various acts of tumbling, dancing, bizarre sound effects and, yes, name origin stories. Considering he still goes by Cheetah today, you can probably see the roles imagination and whimsy play in The Platt Brothers’ show.
All seven Platt kids were raised on 16 acres in Ukiah, Calif.
“We were raised without TV, which is a big part of what we do on stage,” explains the youngest of the three, the fourth Platt child, Boone. “All we had was unstructured play time that a lot of kids might otherwise miss because they’re watching so much TV. We made up our own games.”
That explains why much of their show feels as if you’re watching three overgrown boys roughhousing.
“We don’t do much with what makes sense,” says Boone. “We just ask ourselves, ‘Is it fun?’”
But a Platt Brothers performance is far from unrehearsed or amateurish. The unusual combination of dance, acrobatics, three-part harmonies, storytelling, comedy, pantomime and stage combat is clearly the result of strenuous practice. Take, for example, their first America’s Got Talent performance in which, following a short dance introduction, Boone pantomimes filling a glass with water, gulping it down—with real sound effects produced entirely by the brothers and recorded—and then hurling the glass at Cy, forcing him into a 360-degree, mid-air tumble. Cheetah and Boone then begin tumbling over and over each other like a wheel with feet.
Stories enacted are based entirely on real childhood experiences, like raccoon hunting at night in the woods behind their house, or their father’s favorite punishment: filling a wheelbarrow with rocks and pushing it home.
Cy, the oldest of the three, began taking dance classes when he was 9, after a local ballet company came to his school for an assembly and inspired him to enroll in ballet. Before long, the three were filling their time with dance, theater and gymnastics classes.
Each began performing on stage as soon as he could, although, because of the age differences between them, they didn’t actually perform together until about seven years ago.
“Our skill set was broad,” says Cy. “We all sang and danced and did acrobatics, and very few shows and companies really allow you to do all those things in one show. We were all frustrated by not doing everything we wanted to do … We all realized that it would be impossible to really be ourselves until we were our own bosses, and wrote our own shows.”
The overwhelmingly favorable responses from crowds and reviewers have led them to such opportunities as a stint on America’s Got Talent, a prior Artown festival and a recent appearance in a Cirque du Soleil show.
But even today, in their 20s and performing professionally, the three are continually taking classes in stage combat, aerial arts, trapeze or ”anything that looks fun,” says Boone, explaining that gymnastics training is a huge part of what they do, and when their time permits, they even coach it.
That school assembly had such an impact that the three now also do their own youth outreach programs. In fact, part of this year’s Artown appearance will include a Discover the Arts workshop on July 25 at 9:30 a.m. at McKinley Arts and Culture Center.
“We’ll do a little performance so the kids get to see what we do, and then hopefully we’ll get them up on their feet to create something new of their own, to tell stories of something that’s happened to them,” says Cy. “So they’ll get to see what it takes to put their personal experiences into an entertaining show.”