Ms Janice Koh (Theatre Studies '96)

The Department most warmly congratulates our alumna, Ms Janice Koh (Theatre Studies ’96), on her recent selection as a recipient of the Distinguished Arts and Social Sciences Alumni Award 2023.

Ms Janice Koh graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) from the National University of Singapore in 1996. She also received a Masters with Distinction in Theatre Administration from Goldsmith’s College, under a Public Service Commission scholarship.

Ms Koh is a respected stage and screen actor, who also served as a Nominated Member of Parliament from 2012-2014, passionately championing the importance of the Arts, design and heritage.

She won the Life! Theatre Award for Best Actress in 2003 for Proof and received Best Actress nominations for Loo Zihan’s With/Out, Wild Rice’s Optic Trilogy, Pangdemonium’s Rabbit Hole, and Ovidia Yu’s Hitting (On) Women. Her work in the theatre has spanned over 30 years. Her most recent productions include playing the title role in T:>Works Project Salome by Ong Keng Sen for the 2022 Singapore International Festival of Arts, the title role in Florian Zellar’s The Mother by Pangdemonium, Lifespan of a Fact by the Singapore Repertory Theatre, and Wild Rice’s Supervision. Ms Koh has been actively involved in international co-productions which have toured to major festivals and venues across the world, including Paris, Tokyo, Fukuoka, Edinburgh, and Berlin.

On screen, she appeared in Warner Brothers Pictures’ blockbuster hit Crazy Rich Asians as Felicity Young. Other film credits include Ken Kwek’s Look At Me and Unlucky Plaza, and Kelvin Tong’s The Offering. She has starred in over 30 television projects in Singapore including Sleep with Me directed by K Rajagopal, Code of Law and The Pupil with Weiyu Productions, and Fighting Spiders. Her performance in The Pupil earned her an Asian Television Awards 2010 nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role. She was also nominated for Best Supporting Actress in 2021 for her work in Mediacorp’s The Teenage Textbook series.

Ms Koh currently co-chairs the Wild Rice board, one of Singapore’s leading theatre companies. She is also one of the founders of Pasar Glamour, a non-profit social enterprise, which raises funds each year to support the Arts, and children and women from less privileged backgrounds. For her valuable contributions to the arts scene in Singapore, Janice was conferred the title of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres (Knight of Arts and Letters) by the French government in 2022.

Text taken from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) website, as part of the announcement of award recipients of the DISTINGUISHED ARTS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES ALUMNI AWARD 2023, FASS, https://fass.nus.edu.sg/about-us/stars/stars-2023/distinguished-arts-and-social-sciences-alumni-award-2023/#janicekoh.