LaChanze and Shirley Knight Will Be Swimming Upstream in September

Tony Award winners LaChanze and Shirley Knight will headline a benefit series, Swimming Upstream, set for two performances, September 10 at the Mahalia Jackson Theatre in New Orleans and September 13 at Harlem’s Apollo Theatre. The show, directed by Eve Ensler, features the work of 16 female writers from New Orleans and commemorates the five-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

Swimming Upstream tells the raw stories of women who lived through the Hurricane Katrina disaster, ensuing floods and subsequent rebuilding of the Gulf South. The cast also features performances by Troi Bechet, Asali Njeri DeVan, Anne-Liese Juge Fox, Karen-kaia Livers and singers Michaela A. Harrison and Leslie Blackshear Smith.

LaChanze, a Tony winner for The Color Purple, made her Broadway debut in Uptown...It’s Hot! and was part of the first international tour of Dreamgirls. Her other New York theater credits include a Tony-nominated performance in Once on This Island, Company, Dessa Rose, The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin, The Vagina Monologues and the Encores! productions of Out of This World and The Wiz.

Knight won a Tony Award for her performance in Kennedy's Children and was also nominated for her work in The Young Man From Atlanta. Her other Broadway credits include Three Sisters, We Have Always Lived in the Castle and The Watering Place. Knight was Oscar-nominated for The Dark at the Top of the Stairs and Sweet Bird of Youth.