LaChanze was in the mood to celebrate.
“I am so ready to party,” the actress, wearing a sequined red gown with a bold red lip, said on the red carpet before the second annual Black Theater United gala at the Ziegfeld Ballroom in Midtown Manhattan on Monday night.
LaChanze is the president and a founding member of Black Theater United, a nonprofit that aims to combat racism in the theater community. She was one of more than 600 people — including the singer Alicia Keys, the actor Billy Porter, the actress Kristin Chenoweth and the pop-classical musician Josh Groban — who gathered at the grand event space for a live auction, dinner and performance on a night when most Broadway shows were dark.
The gala raised money for the nonprofit founded by an all-star team of Black theater artists, including the Tony Award winners Audra McDonald, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Phylicia Rashad and LaChanze in the summer of 2020 in response to the murder of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis.
Mr. Mitchell remembered a call at the time with Ms. McDonald, the director Schele Williams and LaChanze. “They just started saying, ‘We’ve got to do something.’”
The organization now offers programs for aspiring young Black theater artists including student internships, a panel and discussion series, a musical theater scholarship and a program that aims to educate artists of color about designing for the theater.
Representation in all aspects of the theater business has been a continuing concern, not only onstage, but backstage and on creative and producing teams. (In the 2018-19 Broadway season, 100 percent of general managers and 94 percent of producers were white, according to the Asian American Performers Action Coalition.)
“Things are slowly but surely changing,” said Norm Lewis, who in 2014 became the first Black actor to play the role of the Phantom of the Opera on Broadway. “There are opportunities that a lot of people don’t know about, and that’s behind the scenes, either crew or P.R. management, things like that are vital to what this industry has to offer.”
Last year’s inaugural gala, also held at the Ziegfeld, also sold out and raised more than $1.2 million for the organization. This year, it sold the venue out again and raised another $1.2 million.
The evening began around 6 p.m. with a cocktail reception. It honored Ms. Keys, the composer and lyricist of “Hell’s Kitchen,” which was a Tony nominee this year for best musical; Linda Twine, the veteran Broadway conductor, composer and music director; and Maxine Williams, the chief diversity officer of Meta.
As waiters ferried trays of candied bacon, jerk chicken tacos and boneless lamb lollipops across the spacious balcony above the chandelier-filled ballroom, stage stars — so often ensconced in various dressing rooms across the theater district at this hour — took the opportunity to catch up.
André De Shields, who had recently ended a much-ballyhooed run as the patriarch Old Deuteronomy in the drag ball revival of “Cats” at the Perelman Performing Arts Center, hugged Schele Williams, a co-director of the Broadway musical adaptation of Nicholas Sparks’s novel “The Notebook.”
The actors Danny Burstein, a Tony Award winner for “Moulin Rouge! The Musical,” and Mario Cantone, who plays Anthony Marentino in the HBO Max series “And Just Like That” chatted in a corner. The actress Annette Bening, in a black leather jacket, embraced Mr. Mitchell.
Around 7 p.m., attendees streamed into the ballroom, where 60 tables were adorned with red tablecloths, roses in gold pots and flickering candles in Playbill-wrapped holders. Dinner featured full-size plates of pear, watermelon and radish salad, braised beef short rib, crispy branzino with tomato relish, and devil’s food cake.
Stage stars including Ms. Chenoweth, Ms. Young and Mr. Lewis presented awards to the night’s honorees, interspersed with performances of numbers from Broadway musicals.
Stephanie Mills, the original Dorothy in the 1975 production of “The Wiz,” a modern retelling of the “Wizard of Oz” story, and Nichelle Lewis, who starred as Dorothy in the recent Broadway revival and Sydney Terry, a recent graduate of Spelman College’s theater program, performed “Home,” the finale from “The Wiz.”
They were followed by Mr. De Shields and the actors Ephraim Sykes and Darrin Scott singing “I Got Life” from the rock musical “Hair.” Both numbers earned standing ovations.
The actor and composer Patrick Tully led a live auction. Items included a karaoke night for 20 people with LaChanze, the singer and actress Vanessa Williams and Mr. Lewis (which sold for $25,000); four tickets to the 2025 Super Bowl in New Orleans ($27,000); and an all-inclusive, weeklong stay at a private villa in Barbados ($50,000, which Ms. Bening and Ms. Keys went in on together).
The festivities were followed by a somber acknowledgment of the Tony-winning actor Gavin Creel, 48, who had died earlier that day from a rare form of cancer. Mr. Cantone, who had performed alongside Mr. Creel, called him “an icon, a beacon of light.”
Ms. Keys, in a plaid gray suit and blazer, did not perform but came onstage to thank the organization for honoring her, as well as her mother, Terria Joseph, who was seated with her at dinner.
“Yaaaaaaay,” Ms. Keys said. “Thank you so much. What an enthusiastic, fantastic group tonight.”
Renée Elise Goldsberry, the “Girls5eva” star who originated the role of Angelica Schuyler in the Broadway musical “Hamilton,” was then joined onstage by Gabrielle Rice, a recent graduate of Howard University’s musical theater program, and the actress Leslie Uggams for a medley of “Hallelujah, Baby” from the 1967 Broadway musical of the same name that made a young Ms. Uggams a star and won her a Tony in 1968.
Then, in a surprise encore, Mr. Mitchell, in metallic silver shoes and a shimmering slate gray suit jacket, sang the jazz ballad “Feeling Good” from the satirical Golden Age musical, “The Roar of the Greasepaint — The Smell of the Crowd.”
Several attendees who had been heading to the exits stopped in their tracks to listen.
“We can’t leave now,” one said. “Brian Stokes Mitchell is singing.”
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