Self-penned musical inspired by deaf son heading to Telford's Oakengates Theatre

Katherine Mount, who was born and raised in Ludlow, will be bringing her show Isle of Woman to Oakengates Theatre.

It stars herself and Nicole Faraday of Bad Girls, Emmerdale and Casualty fame.

The show, next Tuesday, is the latest project for Katherine, 42, who was surprised to rediscover her passion for music though her son Ethan, now 14, who was born profoundly deaf.

Katherine, who now lives in Somerset, first got involved with musical theatre at Ludlow School, taking part in Ludlow Arts Festival, performing in the Festival Youth Theatre and studying drama at Ludlow College. She said: "Throughout this time I was lead chorister in St Laurence's Church under the brilliant tutelage of choirmaster Richard Francis.

"I sang in Ludlow Castle for the twinning ceremony with the French town La Ferte Mace. I joined my first band aged about 18 in Telford."

After drama school in Birmingham she went on to work at Pebble Mill for Radio 4, appear in TV shows like Eastenders and Dangerfield and doing voice work for radio commercials and TV dramas, as well as performing as a singer on the side.

"So when I had my son, Ethan, and discovered he was profoundly deaf, it was a huge blow," she said.

"My life was filled with music and the musicality of speech. The idea that he would never experience those things left me heartbroken. I stopped singing, and we stopped playing music in the house, partly because we were advised to keep background noise to a minimum whilst we worked with Ethan to teach him to listen with his new equipment, but partly because if he couldn't hear then I didn't want to either. It felt so wrong to indulge in the music I loved when he would never be able to access it."

But that all changed when at the age of five Ethan suddenly found himself a part of Kaos Choir for Hearing and Deaf Children at school.

"It was an incredible gift to us," Katherine said. "Suddenly through music he found a medium that he could use to connect.

"He had so much rhythm and would come alive when he signed his songs, which he did at every opportunity, in restaurants, on the tube, in the library, just completely at random.

"It was like he had found his language in music. Seeing this happen to him gave me the OK to go back to music too.

"I started singing lessons again and the first one was like someone had opened the floodgates – years of grief for Ethan came pouring out of me."

Since Ethan has signed the National Anthem for the Queen at the Opening Ceremony of The Olympics in 2012, started his own rock band and had a documentary made about him for CBBC called My Life – I Am Ethan, and he performed alongside Katherine with the BBC National Orchestra Of Wales – and he loves playing the drums.

Meanwhile Katherine has recorded an album of church music, filming videos in St Laurence's Church, Ludlow, and is now touring the country with Isle of Woman which is coming to Oakengates after a warm reception at Shrewsbury's Theatre Severn in April.

She said: "It's a three-part harmony group with lots of comedy and life-affirming songs, a great night of laughs as we decide what we'd like to ditch from our lives and what we would take with us if we were to form the Isle Of Woman.

"It stars Nicole Faraday who I met whilst touring with the Eva Cassidy Story. She played Eva, I was her mother and her sister, though not at the same time."

Isle of Woman is on at 7.30pm. Tickets are available from Oakengates Theatre box office on 01952 382382.