Jonna Tamases acted in children’s theater as a kid. By high school, she was writing sketches and performing comedy. She studied improv in college.

Then, “I had a little interruption in college when I got cancer,” said Tamases.

Turned out that cancer would be fodder for her masterpiece. It was the inspiration behind the riotous, inspirational and touching play that she’s been performing for more than 10 years. “Jonna’s Body, Please Hold” is now playing in Bend (see “If you go”).

“This horrible cancer experience has afforded me this opportunity,” she said in a recent phone interview from her home in Los Angeles. “I love being able to perform about something that means something to people.”

Tamases, 42, was 19 when she learned she had Hodgkin’s disease, a lymphatic cancer. She had no symptoms. During preliminary tests for breast reduction surgery, chest X-rays discovered some odd shadows. Doctors put the brakes on cosmetic surgery and redirected her to other testing, which defined the cancer. It had not spread too far.

“It’s kind of funny,” said the comedian (who says a lot of things are funny). “Now I’m very anti plastic surgery, but it was a planned plastic surgery that led me to catch this early.”

In 1985, Tamases went through 11 weeks of radiation therapy, which was reasonably tolerable, she said. The next summer, follow-up tests found a different kind of cancer: large cell, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. She endured 12 weeks of intense, horrible chemotherapy. Immediately after her cancer, Tamases avoided the subject for a while.

“I thought, ‘Who wants to deal with that subject? It’s so heavy. It’ll be an after-school special,’” she said with a laugh.

In the early 1990s, as she and friends in San Francisco were into spoken word and open-mic performance and she was trying to find interesting, entertaining material, Tamases started to consider using her cancer experiences.

The premise of a switchboard operator fielding calls from various body parts came to her.

“I had been thinking about how these side effects (from the chemo) had so many different effects on my body parts, and how each body part is affected,” she said. “Due to the steroids … I had these ripped shoulder muscles. That’s kind of funny. If you ask (the muscles), they’d say cancer’s awesome.”

“Jonna’s Body, Please Hold” begins with Jonna on a date. The first round of phone calls coming to the operator are from body parts complaining about various things, such as a toe being squeezed by some impractical pumps, or Uta and Ula, the breasts, begging to be released from the confines of a bra. Her bowels call to complain because Jonna needs to go to the lady’s room, but she’s not about to do that on a date.

Then the tumors start calling. It becomes a battle within her body, and the parts must pull together to fight the intruders.

Tamases, who masterfully weaves heavy material between the laugh lines, doesn’t want the theme of cancer to scare viewers from the one-hour play.

“It’s not what you would fear a cancer play would be about,” she said. “It’s fun and it’s funny.”

Tamases said she tries to portray not only her love and appreciation for the beauty of life, but her epiphanies about body-image issues.

“Going through the experience of cancer and those side effects, I couldn’t do anything except sit and be with my body. I couldn’t work. I stopped going to school. (Chemo) fuzzes up your brain so you can’t think or read,” she said. “Toward the end I was just sitting and waiting for the pain to pass and waiting for the final treatment and hoping that the tumors had shrunk enough to stop treatment.

“In that period it forced me to know my body (and gain) a new appreciation of my body as this organic machine that supports my life, my endeavors and happiness,” she continued. “It truly doesn’t matter what it looks like. We get so caught up in our culture that we need to look a certain way, and I think that’s extraordinarily damaging conditioning we have.”

The play touches people, cracks them open, Tamases said. “People tell me the play speaks for them.”

As humans we all experience pain and misery in different forms; losing a loved one, a miscarriage, an illness. Peace and joy are also common experiences, she emphasized. She’s addressing all this in the context of entertainment.

“I’m proud that it’s fun, entertaining and creative. That’s what’s therapeutic for me,” she said. “I think I was born to do this type of work.”

Raised in Palo Alto, Calif., Tamases attended Columbia and Stanford universities. She honed her comedy skills with improv companies in San Francisco, and even toured as a Ringling Bros. circus clown before moving to Los Angeles and focusing primarily on this show.

“Jonna’s Body, Please Hold” — co-written with Nicholas de Wolff and now directed by Randy Schulman — has evolved over its long life. Tamases has performed it many times for the “cancer community,” including patients, support groups and doctors. She built a following with a seven-week run at the Odyssey Theater in Los Angeles, and toured the show around the country. And it was nominated for two Los Angeles Ovation Awards: Best World Premiere Play and Best Lead Actress.

In 2006, Tamases shot the movie version of “Jonna’s Body,” complete with dramatic visual effects (the play uses no props) and other actors (the play is a one-woman show).

A couple years ago, Tamases’ husband quit his corporate job to help her when the play tours.

And as long as people keep asking for the show, it will keep running, she said.

If you go

What: “Jonna’s Body, Please Hold”

When: 8 p.m. tonight, Saturday and March 12-14, 3 p.m. Sunday

Where: 2nd Street Theater, 220 N.E. Lafayette Ave., Bend

Cost: $18 for adults, $16 for students and seniors

Contact: 541-312-9626 or www.2ndstreettheater.com