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On stage March 1, Bryan Kido delivered what director Jerry Rapier termed the actor's best performance so far in Plan-B Theatre Company's "Block 8," a drama about the WWII internment of Japanese Americans.

Unbeknownst to the audience at the Sunday matinee performance, half the actor's left lung was collapsing due to a fluid-filled blister. "You'd never know there was anything wrong with him," Rapier said. "He's the epitome of 'The show must go on.' "

Kido informed theater staff he wasn't feeling well before Sunday's performance, but that no one knew how serious his condition was. Kido and the staff worked out a series of signals Kido could communicate with should he need to end the show early. After the 70-minute performance, he was rushed to the University of Utah Hospital for surgery. He remains in stable condition, said his mother, Karen Kido.

"He seems to be in good spirits," Karen Kido said. "He just doesn't want to disappoint anyone. I know if the doctors let him out, he'll be right up there again to finish the rest of the shows."

A world-premiere theater production by Utah playwright Matthew Ivan Bennett, "Block 8" dramatizes the ways Japanese Americans coped with their internment in Utah's Topaz camp.

Kido plays the role of Ken, a 23-year-old University of California-Berkeley student, who, along with his family, is forced from their San Francisco home to live in Utah's west desert. The play's other character is Ada (Anita Booher), a Mormon woman who works as the camp's librarian and whose son is fighting overseas. The two form an unlikely mother-son relationship as Ken considers the pressure to prove his loyalty to the United States by enlisting in the military.

Several of Kido's family members, including a grandfather and several uncles on both sides of the family, lived in the camps, or were soldiers in an all-Japanese military unit.

Karen Kido said her 25-year-old son, a recent graduate of the University of Utah's Actor Training Program, was excited to land the role. "For the Japanese community, it [the production] is a kind of pain relief," Kido said. "He wants to fulfill his contract."

The production has five more sold-out performances at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center's studio theatre, 138 W. 300 South, until the run ends March 8. Rapier, the play's director who also commissioned the work, said he will fill in the role as Ken until Kido is well enough to return. The theater company will know this week if Sunday's surgical procedure was enough to put Kido back on stage or if more recovery time is needed. "His health comes first," Rapier said.

Karen Kido said her son suffers from a respiratory ailment known as Blebs disease, resulting in the spontaneous collapse of lungs requiring the insertion of tubes in the chest to keep them expanded. She said her son has already suffered two such collapses. The last incident, 15 months ago, kept him in the hospital for four weeks. "If they pull the tube out and the lung stays up, he could be back out soon," she said.