LaChanze, Knight Join SWIMMING UPSTREAM

V-Day is pleased to announce that renowned actor/singer LaChanze, best known for her Tony award winning performance in Broadway's The Color Purple has joined the cast of Swimming Upstream, September 10th at The Mahalia Jackson Theater in New Orleans and September 13th at The Apollo Theater in New York City. The two-night only performances will commemorate the 5th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and pay tribute to the women of New Orleans and the Gulf South.

Swimming Upstream, produced by V-Day, Ashé Cultural Arts Center and The Women Donors Network, premiered in April 2008 at V-Day's "V To The Tenth" celebration and enjoyed a subsequent sold-out run in Atlanta in November 2008. Written by 16 New Orleanian women, Swimming Upstream is a powerful theatrical production that tells the raw and soulful stories of women who lived through the flood with grace, rage and great resiliency, punctuated by a flair for story telling, humor and music that comes from being New Orleanian.

Directed by award winning playwright and V-Day Founder Eve Ensler, Swimming Upstream features performances by Troi Bechet, Asali Njeri DeVan, Anne-Liese Juge Fox, Karen-kaia Livers and singers Michaela A. Harrison, Leslie Blackshear Smith with Tony Award winners Shirley Knight and LaChanze.

For more information, visit: www.vday.org

Photo Credit: Walter McBride/Retna Ltd.