I’m Moira Katz, CEO of National Children’s Theatre (NCT), South Africa’s foremost children’s theatre and arts-education organisation.

For over fifteen years I’ve led NCT from our 4.5-acre campus in Parktown, Johannesburg, staging 8-10 professional productions a year alongside year-round education workshops and quarterly holiday camps and Disney-NCT Musicals in Schools and Rhyme Time education programmes that reach over 100,000 learners, families and schools annually—many of them disadvantaged, orphaned or neuro-divergent who attend free of charge. As a woman in leadership, I see my role as unlocking joy, courage and opportunities for South Africa’s children through the magic of live theatre and theatre arts education, building confidence, creativity and collaborative skills that will shape them, their families, communities and our country’s next generation of leaders. We need them!

Over 15 years as CEO, I’ve grown NCT into South Africa’s leading children’s theatre and education organization—reaching 100,000+ annually, sustaining live theatre through COVID-19, rebranding post-COVD19 to grow our reputation and funding, securing partners including Disney and Standard Bank alongside many others, engaging in new school partnerships across pre-primary, primary and high schools, and readying NCT for a future of programme and education growth, an endowment fund, a re-energized campus, and a world of possibility. The future is yours and ours alike.

My vision is to secure NCT’s next chapter: A refreshed campus with a new outdoor theatre, a national touring footprint reaching schools from Cape Town to Durban, and a strong leadership structure to carry the organisation forward. For South Africa, I want live theatre to keep building a generation of confident, creative, empathetic learners who go on to become our country’s next leaders—whatever the challenges are now and those that lie ahead.

In the past few years I secured a landmark 2024 partnership with Disney Theatrical Group, bringing The Lion King JR to our stages and launching the Disney-NCT Musicals in Schools education programme, now running in 20 underserved primary schools. Luckily Standard Bank attended the sold-out Lion King JR show in 2025, and we worked to establish a solid relationship of support for NCT’s primary school programming and engaged a funder for new our Rhyme Time literacy programme for pre-schoolers and for our potential high-school arts education programme, and live Shakespeare programme for high-school learners At the same time, I greenlit a a capital campaign to build a new Outdoor Theatre & Amphitheatre (in progress). And I kept NCT producing and touring at full strength, winning Naledi Awards for the Best Children’s Theatre Productions in three of the last four years.

Recreational activities

Reading Poetry Children’s Theatre & Education Adult Drama & Communications Conferences Travel