SWIMMING UPSTREAM Commemorates Katrina In New Orleans 9/10, At The Apollo 9/13

Five years after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf South, V-Day, the global activist movement to end violence against women and girls, in partnership with Ashé Cultural Arts Center and The Women Donors Network, will host two special performances of SWIMMING UPSTREAM directed by Eve Ensler, in New Orleans on September 10th at the Mahalia Jackson Theatre and in New York on September 13th at the Apollo Theatre. Proceeds from the two events will benefit V-Day and Ashe.
Written by 16 New Orleans women and facilitated by playwright/V-Day Founder Eve Ensler and Ashe Cultural Arts Center's Executive Director and Founder Carol Bebelle, 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.

Heading the cast will be Tony award winners Shirley Knight and LaChanze. Joining them will be a New Orleans cast including Troi Bechet, Asali Njeri Devan, Anne-Liese Judge Fox, Karen-Kaia Livers, Michaela A. Harrison and Leslie Blackshear Smith.

Eve Ensler ("The Vagina Monologues", "The Good Body") and company premiered SWIMMING UPSTREAM in 2008 at V-Day's "V To The Tenth" celebration at the Superdome to great critical acclaim, and it was followed by a subsequent sold-out run in Atlanta. The process of putting together the piece took over a year as the 16 women (including a gospel singer, a teenage filmmaker, a former Vegas showgirl and a Mardi Gras Indian matriarch) met monthly with Ensler and Bebelle to share and develop original writings about their experiences before, during, and after the storms. Through their meetings, the stories were crafted into SWIMMING UPSTREAM, a stunning production hailed by Variety as "a work of power and poetry,"
Tickets from $27.50 are available now in both cities through www.ticketmaster.com

(1-800-745-3000). Information can also be found on www.vday.org/sus

The Mahalia Jackson Theatre is located at 801 N. Rampart Street in New Orleans.

The Apollo Theatre is located at 253 West 125th Street in New York.

The performances were made possible with generous support from the Rockefeller Foundation and The Culture Project.

Photo Credit: Peter James Zielinski