Janice Honeyman’s award-winning work has ranged from classics to comedies, social issue plays, bawdy romps and highly-acclaimed dramas – from workshopping, play-making, and creating indigenous scripts to directing the best of contemporary Broadway and the West End hits.

She began her career as an actress in 1970 and started directing in 1971. She was a founder member of the Market Theatre, served on their Board for several years, started The Young Market Youth Theatre, The Market Cabaret and served as Resident Director there for 2 years. She also worked as an ad-hoc director in Cape Town, Durban and Bloemfontein. No stranger to the Joburg Theatre, having been its Artistic Director and CEO during the ‘90s, Janice still breaks records every year at the theatre with her popular annual pantomimes.

In 2020 she won a Naledi for Best Director of a Musical for The Color Purple at Joburg Theatre. Its 2020 international tour sadly had to be cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic but she did manage – in the nick of time – to open the RSC production of John Kani’s Kunene and the King at the Ambassador Theatre before lockdown hit the West End. Starring John Kani and Antony Sher it played to packed houses and great acclaim.

This is the third play written by Kani that Janice has directed: Nothing But the Truth travelled to the Lincoln Centre in New York, the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, the Power House Theatre in Brisbane, the Sydney Opera House, London’s Hampstead Theatre and on a national tour of the UK. His Missing played to full houses at the Baxter Theatre and toured to the Bogota Festival in Columbia, South America.

Janice has directed many musicals, operettas and operas – Cosi Fan Tutte, Carmen Jones, A Turk in Italy, La Belle Helene, Once on This Island, Hair, Sister Act, Starlight Express, Mamma Mia, many dramas – I’m not Rappaport, Driving Miss Daisy, Torch Song Trilogy, As Is, Uncle Vanya, Desire Under the Elms and many, many more.

Her own stage adaptations include A H M Scholtz’s novel Vatmaar, Chris van Wyk’s memoir Shirley, Goodness and Mercy, and Madiba Magic amongst others. In 2005 and 2006, her Showboat sold out in Nuremberg and in Oslo, and travelled to Malmo in Sweden, Paris and the UK. Janice’s collaboration with Athol Fugard goes back more-or-less 50 years. Her productions include Hello and Goodbye for The Royal Shakespeare Company Exits and Entrances, Booitjie and the Oubaas, Die Kaptein se Tier (The Captain’s Tiger) and The Blue Iris at the Fugard Theatre in Cape Town. Other directing highlights include Arthur Miller’s Broken Glass with Sir Antony Sher, Fool for Love at the Mannie Manim Auditorium at The Market Theatre and the award-winning Valsrivier with Annamart van der Merwe at the Toyota Woordfees (Best Production Award.)

Janice attended The National Black Theatre Festival in North Carolina, the Edinburgh Festival and the Bermuda Festival with Thembi Mtshali and Sindiwe Magona’s Mother to Mother which she directed. Her critically acclaimed Baxter/RSC production of The Tempest with Sir Anthony Sher and Dr John Kani performed in Cape Town, Stratford-upon-Avon and on a sold-out UK tour. Janice directed Cape Town Opera’s contemporary African-themed The Merry Widow amongst others and the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Plautus/Phil Porter Roman comedy, Vice Versa in Stratford-upon-Avon. She wrote, workshopped and directed an original musical play Cardboard Dreams with 250 street children from Johannesburg dealing with drug abuse, child abuse, poverty and the homeless. Her work with children also includes her recent stage production Bangalory Time at the Baxter Theatre based on her successful TV series of the same name.

Unfortunately, due to Covid-19, Janice missed out on re-directing the 2020/21 international tour of the musical The Color Purple, the 2020 production of the Pantomime Cinderella and the local Johannesburg production of John Kani’s latest play Kunene and The King, reuniting with her long-term colleague, Kani. In 2024 Janice directed a lively and much-lauded non-Replica version of Mamma Mia, and workshopped the 2021 multi-award-winning production of the Traditional tale of Hlakanyana. She directed Tuis ek is Liefie (Home, I’m Darling) at the Toyota Woordfees 2022 and most recently written and directed Malo and the Moon Maiden, a drama set in a circus. Pinocchio, her 37th annual pantomime, opened in November 2025. Janice has won several Naledi Awards, several Fleur du Cap Awards, The Five Roses Young Artist Award, The Johnnie Walker Achiever’s Award, The Toyota Woordfes Best Production Award, the Kyknet Fiesta Lifetime Award, the Fleur du Cap Lifetime Achievement Award, and A FynArts Legacy Award.