I felt silenced after surgery, but once I found my voice it was hard to shut it up

I have never had an understudy. For the past 22 years, if I didn’t show up, the show didn’t go on. I can count on fewer fingers than one hand the number of times I’ve called in sick.

That doesn’t make me special. I’m just a performer and, like most of us, I push myself to the limit to make sure I don’t let anyone down. After all, it’s not just my income and reputation at risk: venues, producers, marketing, bar staff, front of house – we’re all affected by a cancellation. For the audience, it might be their one theatre outing of the year. Are you going to ruin that for them? When we are unwell, we joke about “Dr Theatre seeing us through” – as if it’s a badge of honour.

In my new solo show, The Silent Treatment, I share my own experience of living with the shame of voice loss and how hiding the truth impacted my recovery. It turned out that the biggest obstacle to my healing was staying quiet about it. I was afraid that if I told people I was struggling, I would be considered unreliable, damaged goods.

By the time I saw an ear, nose and throat surgeon in my 30s, I’d been living with and working around my condition for 15 years. An endoscopy revealed two soft cysts on my vocal folds that my surgeon believed had been there since childhood. Together, we unpacked my story to discover their cause and then worked on a treatment plan, including therapy, diet change and, in the end, surgery to remove what turned out to be less than a millimetre of scar tissue. It was life-changing.

After a week of silence and three weeks of vocal therapy, singing became a joy again for the first time since I was a child. But instead of celebrating this news, I was immediately forced back into silence by several industry experts who believed they were serving my best interests.

They told me if I ever wanted to work again, I must keep my surgery secret. But the thing is, once you find your voice, it’s hard to shut it up.

I reached out to my singer friends and, tentatively, shared my news. I was amazed to discover how many of them had similar stories. It didn’t make sense that we felt the same shame. So, I decided to make this show. Halfway through rehearsals, Covid hit, and we were all forced to stop. A lot of performers suddenly discovered how exhausted they were.

And then, when theatres opened again, a little red line on a lateral flow test meant you had no choice but to stay home if you were ill.

We finally had to accept we were human. Our industry has improved, and with high-profile performers such as Adele going public about her experience with vocal-health issues, I hope my show, in its own small way, will make speaking up about vocal health a little easier and a lot less shameful.

The Silent Treatment runs at Summerhall, Edinburgh until August 28