Cuban theater director expelled from the Hermanos Saíz Association

The Cuban theater director Adonis Milán, 24, was expelled this Friday from the Asociación Hermanos Saíz (AHS) following his arrest by several State Security agents during the performance of the play Psicosis by English playwright Sarah Kane, which Milán directed and featured Iris Ruiz.

The officials burst into the independent gallery El Círculo and arrested, along with the actress and the director, activist Lia Villares, visual artists Tania Bruguera and Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, poet Amaury Pacheco, and art historian Yanelys Núñez, who were attending the performance.

Rafael González, vice president of the AHS, informed Milán of the decision to expel him, based on the fact that he does not meet the organization's standards. Although the theater director requested the official document from the organization's vice president, he was denied.

“According to Milán, the refusal to provide him with the official document is to prevent him from appealing to the relevant authorities. Nevertheless, he insists that he will, because although ‘he is not interested in belonging to either the AHS or any of the repressive government bodies,’ he has his rights as an artist and young creator,” he revealed to Radio Martí.

Milán urged the international art community not to support the AHS, an organization that censors and represses artists.

Last November, the pressures from State Security forced Milán to disband his group Perséfone, following the presentation of the play Máquina Hamlet by the German author Heiner Müller in Santiago de Cuba, which he was also able to stage at La Madriguera in Havana.

In statements to Diario de Cuba, he explained that Máquina Hamlet proposes a dialogue between the voices of Fidel Castro and Adolfo Hitler. It is a text written in 1977 in the former German Democratic Republic, in which the author presents an analogy with Shakespeare's Hamlet. “It speaks of destruction, the loss of youth, dictatorship, the repression of the man who rebels against domination,” Milán added.

The artist announced that he wishes to present a performance in 2018 at Bienal 00, an alternative proposal to the Havana Biennial, which was postponed by the country's cultural authorities.