ATKV - Tienertoneel Comes to The Artscape Theatre this Week

Experience young talent, innovation and inspiration at ATKV-Tienertoneel this year when high school theatre companies paint Cape Town red during the regional festival (23 - 26 August) and finals (4 - 7 October).

200 high school theatre groups from across South Africa will participate in this year's ATKV-Tienertoneel Competition: a platform for the development of young theatre talent and audiences. This is the 53rd time that the ATKV's (Afrikaanse Taal- en Kultuurvereniging) oldest project will be presented.

The regional festival starts on the 23rd of August and runs untill the 26th of August at the Artscape Theatre in Cape Town. Admission is free and each evening starts at 18:00. There will be 11 plays (by Paarl Gimnasium, Kairos Secondary School, Hoërskool Bellville, Hoërskool Tygerberg, Hoërskool Cradock and Groote Schuur High School) competing from Wednesday to Friday with the top four plays competing again on Saturday.

And then, finally, the best of the best productions will return to the Artscape Theatre in October for the national finals. The 15 finalists will be announced during the first week of September after all 11 the regional festivals (Pretoria, Roodepoort, Ermelo, Potchefstroom, Sasolburg, Bloemfontein, Durban, Port Elizabeth, Windhoek, Durbanville and Cape Town) have concluded.

The ATKV's main business is the Afrikaans language and culture. Language and culture are viewed by the ATKV as one of the most important instruments to get South Africans to better understand one another. The main cultural focuses cover language, the arts, communities and education. The ATKV drives these focuses by means of several national projects from its head office in Randburg and eight regional offices, as well as at the local level by means of approximately 300 branches across South Africa and Namibia.

Afrikaans is not a language spoken in isolation. It forms part of the fascinating multilingual landscape in Southern Africa. Afrikaans not only belongs to the mother-tongue speakers but to everyone who speaks it. The ATKV-Tienertoneel Competition is an ideal platform for the whole community to perform and enjoy Afrikaans - even if it is not their mother-tongue language.

The ATKV believes in partnerships and joining hands and is pleased to invest in that which the ATKV stands for. The meaningful partnership with Artscape is treasured by the ATKV because we strive towards the same goals as confirmed by Marlene le Roux, CEO of Artscape Theatre: "Our passion is to be an inclusive space for all people. The education and outreach programmes, with the youth as our target market, lay fundamental building blocks towards building a socially cohesive nation."

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