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Dr. Joy Brooke Fairfield (she/they) is a professor and media-maker dedicated to supporting projects that aim at collective liberation. Trained as a director, Dr. Fairfield contributes to live performance, independent film/video, and community organizing. Her academic scholarship focuses on cross-platform performances of queer intimacy, consent, and repair in the midst of ongoing indigenous dispossession and racial capitalism. Dr. Fairfield is a member of the Society for Directors and Choreographers (SDC) and an alumnx of the Drama League Director’s Project, Dell' Arte International, Harvard University (BA), New York University (MA) and Stanford University (PhD) where their 2016 dissertation won the Charles R. Lyons Memorial Prize. They edited a special issue on Intimacy Choreography in the Journal for Dramatic Theory and Criticism in 2019 and serves as a guiding faculty member with Theatrical Intimacy Education (TIE) where she educates others on best practices for onstage/onscreen intimacy. Recent directing projects include Earth as Lover: An Ecosex Walking Tour at the Bundesgartenschau in Mannheim, Germany, and Ecosex in the City at P.S. 122 in New York City, with performance artists Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens. Local work in Memphis includes intimacy choreography and coordination for theatre and film and co-directing As One, a new opera based on a transgender woman's journey towards peace under the Northern Lights, which was staged at Crosstown Theatre with Opera Memphis. 

Recent/ongoing creative collaborations:

Opera Memphis  - As One  (2019), Pretty Little Room  (2026)
Knight & Brinegar - Hissifit (2019), Sloppy Bonnie (2021), Doomsurfing (in development)
Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens - Ecosex Walking Tours & Ecosex Weddings (ongoing) 

Publications: 

Journal Articles (Print) 

Fairfield, Joy Brooke. “Extreme Performance Rituals at the Green New Theatre Symposium” in Performance Research 29.6 On Extremis, Spring 2025 

Fairfield, Joy Brooke and Veronica Vera. “Sex Worker Sunday: a conversation with Veronica Vera about the inaugural 2024 event” in Ecumenica, Spring 2025 

Fairfield, Joy Brooke, Heath Pennington, Raja Benz. “The Queerer Lineages of Consent-Based Performances (Notes from the Field)” in Theatre Topics, Spring 2025   

Fairfield, Joy Brooke. “The Tennessee Drag Ban vs. Memphis Queer Resistance” in Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, 38, no. 2 (2024): 13-28 

Fairfield, Joy Brooke. “The Scope of Practice in India Today: An interview with intimacy coordinator Aastha  Khanna" Journal of Consent Based Performance 2:2 (2023)  

Fairfield, Joy Brooke. “Performance and Protest as Creative World-Building  for Black Liberation: A Conversation with Artist/Activist Jordan Occasionally.” Performance Research 27.1: On Protest (2023). 

Fairfield, Joy Brooke and Robin Laverne Wilson. “I’m Free Because I’m a Fugitive and I’m a Fugitive Because I’m not Free” PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art (Vol 44, Issue 4, Dec 2022). 

Fairfield, Joy Brooke, Krista Knight, and Barry Brinegar. “The Future of Musical Theatre: An Animation of a Video Call between Collaborators, 30 September 2020.” Studies in Musical Theatre 15, no. 1 (2021): 25–40. 

Fairfield, Joy Brooke, and Enzo Vasquez Toral (and Penelope Sumac). “Cuir Devotion: A Conversation.” Ecumenica 13, no. 1 (2020): 81.

Fairfield, Joy Brooke. “Introduction: Consent-Based Staging in the Wreckage of History.” Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 34, no. 1 (2019): 67–75.  

Fairfield, Joy Brooke, Tonia Sina, Laura Rikard, and Kaja Dunn. “Intimacy Choreography and Cultural Change: An Interview with Leaders in the Field.” Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 34, no. 1 (2019): 77–85.  

Book Chapters (Print)

"Not For Profit Pornography and the Benevolent Spectator" in Showing off, showing up: Studies of hype, heightened performance, and Cultural Power. Eds Frederik, L. A., Marra, K., Schuler, C. University of Michigan Press, 2017, pp 255-271

"As Hollow as A Drum: Actor Training the Adishakti Way" in The Theatre of Veenapani Chawla: Theory, Practice, Performance. Ed Shanta Gokhale. Oxford University Press. 2013, pp 277 - 299            

"Becoming Mouse, Becoming Man: The Sideways Growth of Princess Mouseskin" in Transgressive Tales: Reading Queer and Trans in Traditional Fairytales, Eds Kay Turner and Pauline Greenhill, Wayne State University Press, 2012, pp 223- 244

"Cuddle Parties™: The Queer Potential of Metonymic Relationality” in Queering Paradigms III: Queer Impact and Practices. Eds Kathleen O’Mara and Liz Morrish, Peter Lang, 2013 pp 201 - 229