FARGO (AP) - Hours before the show was to go on at the Trollwood Performing Arts School, actress Sydny Koch called the director to say she needed an emergency appendectomy.

That left the 12-member cast scrambling as they prepared for performances of the Timberlake Wertenbaker play "Our Country's Good."

The story, of an officer who organizes a play with convicts and soldiers in 18th-century Australia, has 10 of 12 cast members performing two roles, and no understudies.

Director David Wintersteen and assistant director Alissa McCourt started rehearsing Koch's lines themselves for the Thursday performance. Koch, 16, who had her appendix removed the day before, agonized over missing the show's final nights.

"She felt terrible and was apologizing left and right," said Wintersteen, who also is a theater arts professor at Concordia College.

But as Wintersteen and McCourt nervously prepared to take the stage, Koch surprised them by returning to the show hours after being released from the hospital.

Wintersteen finally allowed her to perform one of her roles after she convinced him her health would not be at risk.

"I'd have been really disappointed if I hadn't been able to go on," Koch said.

To calm students' nerves before they take the stage, Wintersteen usually tells them: "It's a play. It's only a play. It's not a tax audit."

Now, Wintersteen said, he's changed his advice to: "It's not a tax audit - or an emergency appendectomy - it's just a play."