When you have an experience that’s elevated to the level of “magical”, there’s a sense that people don’t want to hear what it was really like. Your wedding day. The birth of a child. Being cast in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. You know, the classic milestones. There’s an untouchability about something that’s supposed to be wondrous that means we shy away from hearing about the full spectrum of the experience. I was cast as Moaning Myrtle in 2018 and took over the role of Delphi in 2020. I stayed with the show for just over three years, performing in Melbourne’s beautiful Princess theatre. To be abundantly clear from the outset, being a part of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child was a truly incredible experience and I don’t regret a moment. I’m grateful for the stability and security it offered me, I carry a sense of enormous pride at having been part of the brilliant Australian company, and it remains one of the single greatest experiences of my life. It was also very hard work. Any commercial theatre show demands a huge commitment from its company. This one demanded more than anyone involved had ever experienced. The hours were long and the work was physically and mentally exhausting. The standard required demanded the utmost from every single department. Never before have I seen so many people working at the absolute top of their game. It was those people who made this experience joyful. Doing the same thing every day puts strain on your body, and on your brain. The greatest gift of this job was seeing the ways we found to entertain each other, to keep the workplace exciting and fun and alive. We had bagels and bingo every week. We held a “nightclub” in the props room in the basement, 15 minutes before the show on a Sunday. (A certain cast member appointed himself bouncer and entirely unprompted bought a velvet rope, sunglasses and security badge for this role.) One actor made a documentary about a minor background character from the play and we had a film premiere in the green room. There were bake-offs and choirs and ping-pong tournaments and quizzes and picnics and parties. We tried our very best to look after each other. We did all of this because outside the world was still turning – bushfires and protests and a global pandemic – and we were always inside together. I came away from this show a better actor and (in a sentence that I truly cringe to write) a better person. I stopped being so quick to judge people. I could acknowledge more easily that generally nobody wants to be unkind, but often people are going through something you don’t know about. In any job you have to learn to get along and face challenges together, but the intimacy of theatre means you see each other at your most vulnerable. You eat together, nap together, celebrate together, cry together. I saw colleagues work through injury and illness, grieve the loss of friends and family members and go through relationship breakdowns and new romances. After we returned to work when lockdowns lifted I watched us all try to cope with the constant fear that the pandemic would shut us down again. One day we’d have a job, the next it might be gone. Every headache, every cough, every close contact was cause for concern. You affect each other constantly, in myriad tiny ways. Leaving was a tricky decision because long-term jobs don’t come along often in our industry. The level of security it provided was incredible. Suddenly a bank would consider me for a mortgage because I had regular payslips. I paid off my student debt. In some ways it felt mad to give up a certainty that I’ve never had before. But I’m also not made to stay in one place and do one thing. I like having a career that keeps challenging me, that itches my brain and makes me feel alive. So, after three years I made the decision to leave and go back to freelance life. I was terrified and worried I was making a big mistake, especially in the wake of the pandemic, but a tiny stubborn little piece of me was compelling me to make things of my own again. After I finished it took me nearly a year to feel normal again. My body and my brain took it hard, like some kind of strange breakup. But it also gave me the space and eventually the energy to engage with parts of myself creatively that I had been missing. I wrote a musical, and then a new solo comedy show. It went unbelievably well, and I don’t think I could have come back to comedy so energised without the enforced break from writing and touring that Harry Potter gave me. Each piece of my career feeds another. I feel most like myself when I’m all over the place, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t love living in just one place for a while, or the neighbours with whom I spent that time. People ask me, “Why did you quit?” as if there’s some resentment or something salacious that I’m keeping secret. There isn’t. It didn’t feel like quitting; it just felt like the right time for a change. I suppose it’s unfathomable because commercial theatre seems like the absolute pinnacle of a performing career, but I love all the different facets of this industry equally. It might seem wild to go from playing a teenage witch for more than a thousand people eight times a week, to making jokes about myself to 50 people in a basement, but to me they are the same. It’s all just telling stories in a room with strangers, and I don’t think I’ll ever quit doing that. Gillian Cosgriff is an actor, singer, writer, musician, composer and comedian. She is performing Actually, Good at the Edinburgh festival fringe