Three years ago Michael Patrick Thornton marched in the Saint Patrick’s Day parade, downed a couple Guinnesses at the Irish American Heritage Center, and picked up a snack at Taco Bell to take to a friend’s house. “And then, bang!” he says. “Five minutes into a taco, it felt like an entire football team was standing on my neck in high heels.” When aspirin didn’t relieve the pain, friends took him to the emergency room at Resurrection Hospital. “I walked in and told them what was going on. I think they thought I was on drugs and just having a panic attack. I was sitting on a table, waiting to be examined. I remember the pain increasing and I said ‘I can’t breathe,’ and that’s all I remember. When I woke up I was on life support and they were doing a spinal tap.”
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The doctors’ best guess was Thornton had suffered a stroke. Almost totally paralyzed, he was transferred to the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, where he initially made good progress. But a few weeks later, as friends walked him down the hall in a wheelchair, he had “the exact same terrifying feeling again.” As his friends watched, he suffered a second, more devastating attack—pouring sweat, turning white, breathing as if “through a coffee stirrer.” When it had passed he couldn’t move, and the left side of his body was locked like a fist. “That one really wrecked me,” he says. “It took so freaking long to wake anything up. I remember lying in bed, staring at my finger for six or seven hours until it finally moved. That’s pretty much how I woke things up: staring, trying to remember the sensation of what it felt like to move it.” Three months later he was released into the care of his parents, in a wheelchair. A year of rehab would follow, but the doctors told him he’d never walk again. He was 24 years old and vowed he’d prove them wrong. That’s the part, he says, that “sounds like a terribly nauseating Hallmark story.”
Early last year Gift Theatre signed a five-year lease for a former shoe store in Jefferson Park—on a block once patrolled by Thornton’s grandfather—and spent six months renovating. They inaugurated the 33-seat black box last fall with a production of The Glass Menagerie directed by Sheldon Patinkin, who’s been a mentor since the company was founded. (That show will be reprised this summer at the city’s Theater on the Lake.) Though Thornton says they’ve been running the business end of the company more or less “by the seat of our pants,” their decisions look sound. The Gift’s 2006 budget is $50,000, the ceiling on expenses for each production is $3,500, and the company has developed partnerships with neighborhood businesses. Since rental venues were costing up to $1,500 a week, the $14,000 annual tab for the new digs should be, at worst, a wash.
WHEN: Previews Thu 5/18-Sat 5/20, 8 PM; opens Thu 5/25. Through 7/1: Thu-Fri 8 PM, Sat 3 and 8 PM
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/A. Jackson.
