About
Artist, citizen, scholar
Creating, devising, and imagining forms through live, digital and mixed theatrics.
Biography
Heather L. Barfield has an extensive background in theater history, criticism, theory, and practice. She received her Ph.D. in Performance as Public Practice from the University of Texas at Austin, holds an M.A. in Performance Studies from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, and a B.A. in Anthropology from UT Austin.
Throughout her career, she has worked as performer, scholar, director, producer, writer, archivist, and arts administrator in the Austin, Texas theater and cultural communities. She is the Director of Advancement for Luxora Theater in South Austin. In 2024, she made the leap to invest in workshops, classes, and event curation at her black box space, Grotto 101, with her company, Sapien Ceremonies.
She continues to devise new artistic work within the themes of her “cyberdrama” trilogy; her latest is Syntax Error: The Quickening of AI at VORTEX Theatre in Austin.
Teaching & scholarship
Dr. Barfield is Professor Adjunct of performance and theatre history/criticism at Austin Community College, Drama Department. She was selected as one of ten ACC faculty participants in the Global Gender and Women’s Studies Faculty Learning Community for 2020–2021, a partnership between Austin Community College and The University of Texas at Austin to globalize curriculum. She has also taught Acting at Texas State University.
In Fall 2019, she conducted theatre research in France as a U.S. Fulbright Scholar, creating community-devised performances and workshop projects titled “Performing Migrant Stories” in collaboration with Aix-Marseille Université, IREMAM, Compagnie La Scène Manassa, Agir in Aix-en-Provence, and OICEM in Marseille.
On stage
Barfield’s theatrical credits include the creation and direction of VORTEX’s Wake for the Dark Poet (B. Iden Payne Award for Outstanding Production of a Drama) and her direction of Machinal for VORTEX’s Summer Youth Theatre (B. Iden Payne Award for Outstanding Production of Theatre for Youth). She has performed locally in critically acclaimed shows including VORTEX’s Dark Goddess, Rude Mechs’ Dionysus in ’69, and Rubber Repertory’s The Casket of Passing Fancy.
Her artistic work often incorporates intermodal forms of storytelling through digital and analog methods. In her critically praised production Privacy Settings: A Promethean Tale (2016), Barfield and her cast of devised-theater makers explored whistle-blowers, digital privacy, and civil liberties alongside audience-immersive interactions. In 2022 she directed the new opera Eva and the Angel of Death, produced by new music collective Density512 — the story of Eva Mozes Kor, a survivor of Auschwitz, and her struggle towards healing, reconciliation, and forgiveness.
She was an arts writer for The Austin Chronicle and a contributing member of the Austin Critics’ Table.
Leadership
From 2003–2017, Dr. Barfield was CFO/COO of arts services organization Austin Creative Alliance, managing the financial, administrative, and budgetary aspects of ACA and ninety sponsored project organizations, and received an ACA Honors award for her service in 2017. In 2023 she became Director of Finance and Operations with IndigiGenius, an organization offering access, education, training, and expertise to Indigenous communities pursuing opportunities in STEM fields.
A 32-year member of VORTEX Repertory Theatre, she has served as its Associate Artistic and Development Director and as Board President. More on leadership and service →
A healthy and just social ecosystem depends upon vibrant, eclectic, diverse, reflexive, and innovative arts.
Elsewhere
- Grotto 101 Performance Lab
Black box space for workshops, classes & events - Sapien Ceremonies
Artistic company - Key Hole
Music & sound — on Bandcamp - The Austin Chronicle
Archive of arts writing