Struck Down
Tamney, who was 36, had dedicated 14 years to storefront theater, appearing with companies like the Curious Theatre Branch, Oobleck, Redmoon, and the Neo-Futurists. A talented physical comedian and a devotee of David Mamet–who’d once visited his acting class at the Goodman theater school and advised them all to drop out–Tamney consistently turned in some of the most inventive, convincing performances on any stage in the city. But after years without commercial success, New York beckoned. He’d performed the previous two summers at the New York International Fringe Festival and felt his future was there. Still, on the night Necessity closed, he felt “profoundly sad about [leaving], and kind of alone in this sadness, for Chicago didn’t really care, the theater didn’t really care.”
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Keep going, he told himself, dragging through the next few painful days, which seemed to blur into one. He had a lot to do before his move to New York: get new head shots, call his agent for advice, invite other agents to a screening of Our Father, a film by Bryn Magnus and Eric Wright in which Tamney starred. But under the crushing pain he didn’t care if he ever heard from his agent again, didn’t care if anyone came to the screening, didn’t care if New York fell into the ocean. He quotes a line from the film to describe his grinding lethargy: “The confusion and exhaustion of this inner battle suffocate me and keep me at a cautious distance.”
Maybe I’m just tired, he thought. I’ve been battling pain for days…no, years. Ever since his girlfriend committed suicide in 1996. Maybe I’ll get high and have a good cry. He’d been doing that a lot over the last two years.
“I like being in hospitals sometimes, because I like to cheer people up,” Tamney says. “But this wasn’t one of those times.” A CAT scan revealed that Tamney had had a stroke.
Worst of all, the only treatment doctors could offer was time. Just be patient, they told him again and again. In a few years he would probably recover.
But before he left for New York he tested the waters by staying with his brother Joe in a Virginia suburb for a while. “I could feel the damage but I couldn’t see it,” he explains. “Before, my physicality was a well-oiled thing. The oil had now turned to glue.” Joe manages a computer learning center, so Tamney signed up for a class, hoping to learn some marketable skills. “In the first hour of class, I found my voice sometimes would not register until like the third or fourth word in a sentence, which made asking questions in class impossible. I drew in and sheltered myself from the world. It’s amazing how much confidence and self-esteem are wrapped up in the existence of a voice.”
