Camryn Moore has a very nice speaking voice. It’s clear, articulate, and engaging, the kind that an acting coach tries to coax out of his aspiring thespians who just can’t sem to vocally grip their audience. So it makes sense that Moore is the star of her own one-woman show, which has won both audience and critical acclaim. It also makes sense that the writer/actress based the show around her other occupation—phone sex operator.
Moore’s show, Phone Whore, is a one-act, semi-autobiographical play that chronicles a day in the life of a woman who earns her living by anonymously getting people off via telephone from the comfort of her own home. The show is currently touring North America, and is coming to D.C.’s Electric Maid Community Living Room on Oct. 22 and 23.
Moore has years of experience in performing arts, as she worked as a journalist, playwright, director, and dancer before she made the unconventional career switch to the world of sex-work a year-and-a-half ago.
“They say write about what you know,” Moore said. “When I started working on the phone lines, my world kind of shrunk. I was spending 14 to 18 hours a day in my living room. … And when that’s the material life gives you, you run with it.”
That material is not for the faint of heart, the conservatively-minded, or anyone uncomfortable hearing a woman on her couch fulfilling her customers’ fantasies—which start out fairly vanilla but quickly work their way up the kink-o-meter. But Moore is up front about her show’s vulgar and explicit nature. Her audiences know what they’re in for.
“Everyone has the right to draw their own boundaries,” she said. “It’s very graphic, but artistically so. There are parts that are funny, and parts that you’ll want to scrub out of your mind with a toothbrush.”
Despite the occasional offended walkout, Moore has managed to find such open-minded audiences all over the United States and Canada. She started out largely at fringe festivals, and has been bringing her show to small, independent venues across the continent. She even staged one show in a living room in Austin, Texas—which, given that the play is entirely set in a living room, was oddly appropriate. In fact, she liked the realistic setting so much that she plans on doing more in-home shows as the tour progresses. She’s also had surprisingly equal success in both red and blue states, and sold out more than half of her shows in Alberta, even though, in her words, it’s “the Texas of Canada.”
So unless you’re a complete stud, don’t see Phone Whore for a first date. But, don’t rule it out either, just because it’s written about and performed by someone you could normally chat with for $3.95 a minute. Moore says the play is about owning up to your sexuality, and not being ashamed of what goes on in your own head. “Fantasies are wonderful,” she said.
The best part? Moore loves to get feedback from her audiences, and always makes herself available for questions after the show.
And if you’d like to speak with her in a different setting, let’s just say she hasn’t quit her day job.
Phone Whore is showing on October 22 and 23 at 8 p.m. at the Electric Maid Community Living Room. Tickets will be $12.
