One man, one moment

The pain is real, even before it’s permanently carved or burned into flesh.

The act of engraving one’s emotional and psychological wounds on the body—known as “self-injury” or “self-harm” and often called “cutting”—isn’t to be dismissed as a mere cry for attention. You can do that with a T-shirt.

No, self-injury goes deeper than that. It’s an addiction, not a fashion statement.

No one knows that better than Ben Moroski, a UC Davis graduate who earned his stage chops with outstanding performances on local stages. Now, he’s returning to Sacramento with a well-received one-man show that tells the story of his own journey through self-harm—and explains the scars and wounds that some of us in his local audiences were previously too uncomfortable to ask about.

Winner of Best of Fringe at The Hollywood Fringe Festival in 2012, This Vicious Minute is not the one-man show Moroski initially had in mind. He wanted to do one, but was thinking of something fictional when a producer suggested he write about himself.

“I resisted that,” he said. “There’s a tendency to just be me up here talking about my problem or issue or addiction for an hour-and-a-half while everyone listens politely.”

What he found instead was that “if you’re really honest and willing to dig deep, it’s a different process.”

The result is a show that has done well in Los Angeles, with rave reviews in the Southern California press. The production closes there on February 24; three days later, Sacramento’s KOLT Run Creations, where Moroski had an outstanding turn in Jean Anouilh’s Antigone in 2011, hosts the opening of a limited run through March 9.

Moroski’s found that audiences respond to the authenticity. “Everyone has pain,” he said. “Everyone has to find ways to cope with it. Everyone has to find ways to live in the only moment we’ve got, which is the present one.”

“Even if it’s the most painful, vicious moment, it’s still the only one I’ve got.”