How a Halifax theatre mainstay turned her deepest secret into her boldest play yet

It's hours before curtain on the sold-out opening night of Halifax theatremaker Lee-Anne Poole's new play, Talk Sexxxy. Her nerves are palpable, and she admits that she'll be "deep breathing" until performance time. Considering the show has been over 15 years in the making and that it's Poole's first time debuting a new work since she stepped down as executive director of the Halifax Fringe Festival in 2022 — to "refocus on her own creative pursuits," as she put in a release at the time, — her anxiety is understandable. 

Then, there's the issue of the subject matter. Talk Sexxxy is a candid look at the life of a phone sex operator, inspired by Poole's own experiences.

Poole still remembers a workshop production from 10 years ago, when she had cast longtime collaborator and multi-time winner of the Robert Merritt Awards (the biggest prize for theatre in the province) Stephanie MacDonald in the show's only role. (In the finalized version of the production, MacDonald is directing and Poole is acting.) 

"For those workshop nights … I remember feeling like I stood in the lobby, and as [the] audience left the room, I felt like a lot of people couldn't look me in the eye — or maybe I couldn't look them in the eye," she says. "But the other thing is, in the play, then and still now — and I say very explicitly now at the start of the play — I do not say anything near the worst parts. And I'm desperately trying to make you laugh."

CBC Arts: In a 2010 story from The Coast about your play Splinters, you said: "The actual events of the play are not autobiographical. Besides the fact that, you know, I have experienced some of them." Since Talk Sexxxy bills itself as semi-autobiographical, how much of that applies here?

Poole: I think you can use that quote for everything I have written or will write.

I mean, I actually did phone sex. I actually was going through a very depressive time, and was pretty agoraphobic and didn't leave my apartment, except for an hour once a week to go to the grocery store in the middle of the night. And I did that for about six months. A lot of the calls are pretty directly based off of my calls.

You say this play was over 15 years in the making, and you attempted to tell the story in other formats along the way. Why did it take so long, and what made you settle on theatre as the medium for this piece?

I originally was writing while I was doing phone sex. I was working on a blog that was anonymous — and at one point, someone reblogged it, and it had, like, 10,000 views in a day, and I freaked out and took it offline because suddenly I was really ashamed … I tried to write it as a screenplay once. I tried to write it as fiction once. I was doing poems and drawings and stuff like that. 

Part of the answer is also part of why it's me performing it and not an actor performing it. For me, part of the interesting thing has been my circling the drain with it: my fear around it, my shame around it and my continuous attempts to figure it out. 

I think that's something that people can relate to, regardless of if they make art or not: I think there's those moments in our lives that either maybe you regret — or you don't regret, but you don't want people to know about. Or you reconsider. Or you wonder why you did it, and you think, 'But that's not me.' But it is me, because it obviously was me. 

The description also mentions "this is the play and the making of the play." What does that look like, practically? 

This is the way I would describe it, and I hate it. I hate it because I think it sounds really bad. But, you know when you go to a fancy, very overpriced restaurant and you order a caesar salad, and a deconstructed caesar salad comes back to you? It is kind of like a deconstructed play. The set's over there. The script is there. You can look at it whenever you want. I'm saying it, memorized, but you can look at it. You can skip pages ahead. So like, all of the pieces of theatre are there, but we've pulled them apart.

While this is a fictional work, as we've said, it is informed by lived experience. What was it like to be a phone sex operator?

Oftentimes, you'd look at the math and you'd go, "Oh my gosh, two dollars a minute? How long did you talk to him? He spent so much money that he could have hired a sex worker. Why would he call to talk to someone instead of hiring a sex worker?" The answer is usually [that] whatever they want to talk about is something that is satiated only in fantasy. 

I talked to one guy who wanted to pretend he was Dracula, and he did the voice. One guy, we never even had phone sex. He just wanted to talk about: "I would give you a rose and let's go for a walk on a beach." Literally, just the sweetest little conversation. One man, at one point, said to me, "I want to bend you over in front of everyone at Walmart." 

There is definitely, like, a "whoa, what's gonna happen now?" And I will say, the rule of phone sex is the same thing with improv: It's "yes and." [The job] was surprising. It was not what I thought, and it was often entertaining and funny — and often numbing and difficult. And I think the thing that I got the most from it that I wasn't expecting was the camaraderie between myself and the other phone sex operators.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Talk Sexxxy runs Jan. 9-19 at St. Mary's University Art Gallery (5865 Gorsebrook Ave.) in Halifax.