Iury Salustiano Trojaborg

PhD research project: “Ancestral Dramaturgies”

PhD supervisors: Gustavo Ciríaco from DAS-Research, Amsterdam University of the Arts (main supervisor), Esa Kirkkopelto from Tampere University, Finland and Jörgen Dahlqvist from Lund University, Sweden (second supervisors)

Institution: Malmö Theatre Academy; Agenda 2030 Graduate School at Lund University

Period: February 2022 to October 2026

Ancestral Dramaturgies is a dialogical artistic research method centered on cross-temporal exchanges and their subsequent transformation into dramaturgical and performative outcomes. While these exchanges utilize various formats such as interviews, they extend beyond traditional qualitative inquiry to include encounters with more-than-human entities and ancestral lineages. I position my doctoral research as an investigation into my own positionality, tracing the tensions between my biological, migrational and spiritual ancestries

Ancestral Dramaturgies is supported by three pillars: migration, Queerness, and decoloniality. I conceptualize it through a lens of critical reflexivity, analyzing the intersectional markers—gender, sexuality, racialization, class, and neurodivergence—that constitute my existence as a non-binary, diasporic interdisciplinary artist of colour. This practice interrogates the capacity for creative agency within white Western European contexts that frequently marginalize Global South subjects.

 Ancestral Dramaturgies functions as a methodological catalyst for new modes of listening, speaking and the possible articulation between both. By rejecting the role of the "representative spokesperson," I acknowledge the inherent agency of my interlocutors. The result is a kaleidoscopic assemblage of memory, sound, and dream. Emerging from the intersection of autoethnography and decolonial praxis, this method retraces ancestral lineages to investigate how past individual and collective historical traumas inform contemporary and speculative futures. 

Central to the development of Ancestral Dramaturgies were the conversations established with my maternal grandmother Voinha before and after her passing, with my blood related ancestors in Rio de Janeiro and Manaus, Brazil, with the migrant community in both Malmö and Copenhagen, and with the more-than-human entities on the island of Møn in Denmark. Most of these exchanges have become the source material for several transdisciplinary artistic outcomes, spanning live performance, performative ritual, documentary film, scientific article and essay, autofiction short story, poetry and sonic installation.

The aim of Ancestral Dramaturgies is to establish a methodology that disrupts hegemonic narratives within theatre and performance. In doing so, it proposes radical imaginaries for the future that align with the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development—specifically the objectives of achieving gender equality (sdg#5), reducing international inequalities (sdg#10), and promoting peace and justice (sdg#16). Ancestral Dramaturgies is therefore anchored in the principles of social justice, actively deconstructing power structures by viewing them through the analytical lens of social sustainability.

This research searched for answers to the following questions:

1. How can an inquiry into my ancestors’ pasts and presents support the development of an artistic method that acknowledges individual ways of seeing and being in the world? 
2. In what ways can performance art dismantle and reconfigure established power dynamics to facilitate the imagination and achievement of regenerative futures, as framed by the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development?

Iury Salustiano Trojaborg is an interdisciplinary, queer, non-binary, migrant artist who has worked practically and theoretically in Theatre, Performance, Dance and Opera since 2006 in different environments and roles, including actor, performer, writer, director and dramaturge in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), Frankfurt am Main (Germany), Copenhagen (Denmark), Poznan (Poland), Berlin (Germany), Oldenburg (Germany) and Malmö (Sweden).

Iury has a BA in Acting from the Federal University of the State of  Rio de Janeiro (2009) and a conjoint Erasmus Mundus MA in Performing Arts from the Goethe Universität Frankfurt am Main and University of Copenhagen, Denmark (2012).

Read more about Iury's PhD in the Lund University Research Portal – portal.research.lu.se

Read more about Agenda 2030 Graduate School at Lund University – sustainability.lu.se

Learn more about PhD education at the Malmö Theatre Academy, by visiting the following website – thm.lu.se