White Centre Black Maroon — A Play by John Michael Mouskos

Synopsis

East Mandler has turned 35 the age when his mother drove off the Brooklyn Bridge to her death, carrying him in her womb. Now her terror echoes through his own life. Drawn into the depths of her haunted psyche, East experiences parallel realities in which time loses all meaning, and the person he believes himself to be, begins to unravel.

Ghosts from East’s past surface in disturbing visions, bringing memories and truths that contradict one another. Each threatens the lives he believes he has lived, and an act he can’t forgive himself for. Caught between guilt, memory and self-erasure, East must confront what he has done even as his trust in his own consciousness collapses.

From his forty sixth floor Manhattan penthouse, furnished only with a Steinway piano and a Rothko painting, East looks towards the East River. The city appears stark and distant, like an image remembered from another life. Below him the river mirrors the currents of memory pulling him further from the present.

White Centre Black Maroon is a haunting psychological drama about guilt, identity and memory and the fragile boundaries between what we remember and believe, and what we cannot bear to face.

My play does not seek to explain away East’s experience. It draws the audience into its bleak beauty and disorientation, where the past will not stay hidden and the surface offers no certain refuge.

John Michael Mouskos