HOW do you combine the utter devastation of tidal flooding that's beset Britain in recent times with a fantastical tale about disablement and dreams?

Actor/writer/director Gerda Stevenson has managed it, and now Oran Mor audiences will have the chance to enjoy her highly imaginative tale, Skeleton Wumman.

Featuring Amy Conachan, Buchan Lennon and Seylan Baxter on cello, the story tells of a disabled teenager whose life was confined to watching TV, and occasional visits to her local swimming pool, where she fell in love with a young deaf man.

However, tragedy arrives in the form of a devastating tidal wave. And the teenager and her parents are swept from their home.

Beneath the sea, the teenage girl is snagged on a cable, but a young man accidentally hauls her to the surface.

"I got the basis of the story from a book of legends and myths featuring an old Inuit legend," Gerda reveals in excited voice.

"It totally grabbed me when I first read it and I wrote it up as a monologue. Then, after I did a rehearsed reading in 2012, and it went down well, it became a play with two central characters."

The recent rainfall inspired Gerda to develop her apocalyptic moment, but personal experience informed her decision to incorporate sign language into the piece.

"I've always loved British sign language, it's very theatrical," she maintains.

"But I also have a daughter who has Down's Syndrome and when aged two she wasn't speaking I went along to a deaf centre and learned how to sign.

"Later, as an actor and communicator I figured it was an amazing expression of language and I realised I wanted to work sign language into this piece, dramatically. And Buchan Lennon's parents are deaf, so he can sign."

Gerda brings a massive amount of experience to her Oran Mor production. An award-winning actress she trained at RADA and went on to join Scotland's 7:84 theatre company, working alongside the likes of Alex Norton and Bill Paterson.

Gerda picked up a Scottish BAFTA Best Film Actress Award for her performance in feature film Blue Black Permanent and appeared in Braveheart as the mother of William Wallace's sweetheart Murren.

She has since appeared in a huge range of TV series, including Taggart and The Bill. Right now, she has roles in BBC's Shetland and River City.

But she's also a director, (having directed the very first Oran Mor play) and a writer. Her play, Murray Versus Federer, toured Scotland and went on to open in New York.

"It was great to go to New York," she recalls. "I had a month there, and I had a play published in New York literary magazine, Salmagundi. That was fantastic."

Gerda's life in the arts seemed inevitable, inspired by her father composer/musician Robert Stevenson, she was always performing as a child, acting and singing. After youth theatre in Edinburgh, drama college in London beckoned.

But has becoming a master of several trades limited single opportunities?

"I'm asked this quite a lot," she says, smiling, "but I don't think it's caused me problems.

"I just always do everything, but they feel like the same thing, whether it's about my collection of poetry being published or having recorded a CD of my own songs.

"I've always seen work as a series of projects, not as a career trajectory. And I love to be busy."

Gerda adds; "I know a lot of good actors who wait around for the phone to ring but it doesn't suit me to sit around so I originate ideas. And if the phone does ring it's very nice."

l Skeleton Wumman, Oran Mor, until Saturday.