Janice Honeyman

Biography: Janice is South Africa’s leading international director with fifty years of experience on over one hundred productions worldwide. She was a founder member of The Company at the Market Theatre (South Africa’s leading theatre company). She has directed, everything from Shakespeare for the Royal Shakespeare Company (the world’s most famous Shakespeare company) to bawdy comedies. Her plays have toured in America, Europe, Australasia, Africa and Asia. She directed South African satirist Ben Voss’s Beauty and the BEE and Benny Bushwhacker and is a regular director for the Royal Shakespeare Company in England including The Tempest with John Kani and Sir Anthony Sher.
She directed the world premiere of Athol Fugard’s Booitjie and the Oubaas. John Kani’s Nothing but the Truth, which toured Australia, America and Europe. She was invited to direct Celebrate South Africa at the Royal Albert Hall in London and recently directed Sir Anthony Sher and John Kani in Kunene and the King. This was Sir Anthony Sher’s final production for the Royal Shakespeare Company before his sad death in 2022.
Few have immersed themselves in every aspect of theatre culture as Janice has. From children’s theatre, to women’s concerns and politics, her repertoire is boundless.
Janice is also the panto-queen, using pantomime as Pieter-Dirk Uys uses Evita and Shapiro uses cartoons; her pantos allow us to laugh at ourselves. For thirty years Janice has pounced on government gaffs, picked up on commercials that become ‘street-talk’, badly behaved celebrities or sportsmen, all become characters in her pantomimes. The combined effect is an hilarious, iconic, and sold-out satirical annual tradition.
Janice is an icon of South African and African theatre and satire and one of the most respected and loved directors on the continent.