Stacy Keach Describes Heart Attack During PAMPLONA at the Goodman

It has been confirmed that Stacy Keach suffered a heart attack onstage during the opening night performance of PAMPLONA at the Goodman Theatre, prompting the organization to cancel the rest of the show's run to allow him to recover.

Today, Keach took a moment to describe the experience to The Chicago Tribune. "I felt like this great fog had come over me. It was the most bizarre moment of my entire career," he said.

He continued: "I was feeling no pain. The whole time, I was hoping that I was just in the middle of an actor's nightmare, and then I would soon wake up and find myself back in the position where I knew what I was doing again."

The Tribune originally reported that during the opening performance, Keach was getting lost in his monologue, "repeating large swaths of text three or four times and appearing confused and, for certain, far from his usual on-stage self."

"I was very much aware that I was in a state of repetition," Keach said. "I was suddenly, totally lost. Hemingway's problem of what word to put on the page intersected with mine, which became how to find the next line. It has never happened to me before and, I hope, will never happen to me again."

Artistic director Robert Falls told the audience and the Tribune that Keach had been feeling ill all day leading up to the performance, but wanted the show to go on as scheduled. The show was called off about an hour into the night. Keach underwent medical testing following his opening night performance, which was halted by Falls midway through when it became clear that Keach was struggling.

Keach told the Tribune that he "would have kept on going and going" had the producers not stopped the show, and he is determined to return to the play in 2018. "I love the people of Chicago and I have an unfulfilled obligation to the play, to the city and to myself," he said.

Stacy Keach has maintained a series of performances in motion picture and television projects while continuing to add to his significant achievements on the stage-both classical and Broadway. His most recent motion pictures are director Stephen Gaghan's Gold, starring Matthew McConaughy, EdgaR Ramirez, and Bryce Dallas Howard, and Gotti with John Travolta. Other recent films are Truth (with Cate Blanchett and Robert Redford), Stephen King's, Cell, (with John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson,) and Netflix's Girlfriend's Day, starring and produced by Bob Odenkirk. His filmography includes John Huston's Fat City, co-starring Jeff Bridges, Alexander Payne's Academy Award nominated big screen drama, Nebraska, If I Stay, Bourne Supremacy, Sin City: A Dame To Kill For, The Ninth Configuration, The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter, Doc, Up In Smoke, American History and the classic western, The Long-Riders, which he produced with his brother James Keach. Keach was one of the stars of the NBC comedy series, Crowded. He recently finished filming a few episodes of award winning Man With A Plan alongside Matt LeBlanc and Kevin Nealon. Prior television includes: Showtime's Ray Donovan, Starz's Blunt Talk, CBS's, Blue Bloods, Fox's Titus, Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer, Two and a half Men, Prison Break, NCIS: New Orleans, and Hot In Cleveland. As a narrator his voice has been heard in countless documentaries and numerous books on tape. He is the narrator on CNBC's American Greed. Keach has portrayed a constellation of the classic and Contemporary Stage's greatest roles, and he is considered a pre-eminent American interpreter of Shakespeare. His Shakespearian roles include Hamlet, Henry V, Coriolanus, Falstaff, Macbeth, Richard 3, and King Lear. He also headed the national touring company cast of Frost/Nixon, portraying Richard M. Nixon. Keach's memoir All in All: An Actor's Life On and Off the stage, received the Prism Literary Award. Other awards include: Golden Globe, three Obies, three Vernon Rices, two Drama Desks, three Helen Hayes, Emmy and Tony Award nominations, and he won the Prestigious Millineum Recognition Award, the Will Award. Keach was recently inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame, and received a Hollywood Film Award for Best Ensemble in the film Gold. He also received the 2016 Best Narrator from The Society of Voice Arts and Sciences in the category of Crime and Thriller for his work on Mike Hammer audio novels. Keach was a Fulbright scholar to the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, attended the University of California at Berkeley and the Yale Drama School. Of his many accomplishments, Keach claims that his greatest accomplishment is his family: his wife of 30 years, Malgosia, and children Shannon and Karolina.

Photo Credit: Liz Lauren