The West Linton actress returns to the Borders at the Wynd Theatre in Melrose on Saturday for her theatre group’s drama No Obvious Trauma.

It begins a series of performances around Scotland and the UK for the former Peebles High School pupil.

As well as taking No Obvious Trauma to audiences in Aberdeen, Glasgow and the Isle of Mull in September, she features in two plays at next month’s Edinburgh Festival – playing Nancy Sleekit, and featuring in children’s play Jumping Mouse.

“I will be playing a kids show in the morning and a killer in the afternoon during the festival – I will have to make sure I don’t get the two roles mixed up,” laughed Zoe when she spoke to TheSouthern from London, where she is now based.

Zoe began her acting career with Tweed Theatre and Borders Youth Theatre before moving to London to begin a course in drama at the Central School of Speech and Drama, where she met four other students who would go on to form Unpacked in 2004, a theatre company specialising in darkly comedic stories, either self-written or adapted.

“Alongside myself, Unpacked is made up of one person who did the acting course, one who did directing and two who did puppetry,” she said.

“The basis of the course was that you all worked together and that is how it has worked out.

“We are from all over the country and there is a bit of push and pull with what people want. Most of our work is devised by ourselves but if we want to take a story we work on it on our own way.

“July 29 was our fifth birthday and hopefully we can continue for many years to come.”

No Obvious Trauma centres on a disturbed woman (played by Zoe) who was brought up in an orphanage and is admitted to an isolated psychiatric institution in 1932. The junior doctor she is assigned to begins to investigate her history, while a colleague recognises her from his past.

“It has a massive cliffhanger at the end,” said Zoe of the play written by Unpacked members and nominated for a Total Theatre award in 2006.

“It is the first of a planned trilogy which we might make next year or five years down the line, we don’t know yet.

“But we are the only ones who know what the ending is and we won’t be telling anyone.”

As well as performing as Nancy Sleekit for Peebles director Sean Kane at the Lawnmarket in Edinburgh, Jumping Mouse will also take to the stage from August 7 to August 31 at The Pleasance during the festival, before touring from Elgin to Devon and including a homecoming gig at Peebles’ Eastgate Theatre.

But despite five years of travelling to venues across the UK with Unpacked, Zoe still loves to hit the road, particularly on her return home to Scotland.

“We still see it as a holiday, five years on from when we began.