By Richard Andreoli

Comedians Kathy Najimy and Mo Gaffney discuss their 20 years together and their upcoming reunion benefiting L.A.'s Gay & Lesbian Center

It's hard to keep a good legend down, particularly when it involves Kathy Najimy and Mo Gaffney, the acclaimed feminist comedy team better known as Kathy & Mo to both gay and straight fans across America. This powerhouse duo rose from small cabaret stages in San Diego to a successful off-Broadway run, followed by numerous tours and two HBO specials. Then in 1991 the two parted ways, but was the split a dramatic episode of enraged screams and torn clothing, or simply a necessary vacation? What brought the duo back together last year, both on Broadway and then to the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center? And what reunites them at the Center once more for two special benefit performances on Sept. 23 and 24? For answers, the ladies covered their 20-plus years of history to recount the torrid tale from the beginning.

"Kathy was in jail, and at that time I was a visiting nun," explains Gaffney as she snacks from a can of low-fat Pringles in between drags on her cigarette. "We would try to keep their spirits up."

Okay, that's not true. Reality was far more dramatic.

"Mo was my friend Cecilia's roommate, and I had heard she was this really funny woman," recalls Najimy of her early days in San Diego. "Then one night their apartment burned down. I suspect there was a cigarette involved, they say it was a candle, I still don't know the truth." Though some mystery remains, what is known is that Gaffney and her roommate crashed at Najimy's apartment, and while Cecilia slept, Najimy and Gaffney partied. "We stayed up all night making fire jokes, singing songs, doing characters and improv," Najimy laughs.

"I was in my early 20s, what did I have to lose, really? Nothing," interjects Gaffney; actually, the interviews were conducted separately, but if she could have interjected, it would have been now. "Maybe a cute top got burned or something, but I wasn't heartbroken."

"It was hilarious," Najimy says. "We really clicked in a way that I had never clicked creatively with anybody ever."

From there the duo began creating characters, including Maddie and Syvvie, two well-meaning New Yorkers who have been friends for 47 years. Najimy and Gaffney would improvise the old women's conversations just to make each other laugh, but when they were asked to perform at an AIDS benefit, they decided to bring the two ladies to the stage.

"We didn't plan anything, write anything, we had no costumes," says Najimy. "I would break out into hives unless I had a complete script to go on stage with now, but in those days, who knew? We were just stupid and young."

Perhaps, but Maddie and Syvvie were a huge success and soon Najimy and Gaffney became known as "Kathy & Mo." They would sit on the roof of Gaffney's new apartment eating Twix bars and drinking Diet Cokes while writing about lesbian feminist poetry groups, and angels with slightly different views of creationism. They performed at places like The Flame, a San Diego gay bar, and the Old Town Opera House, until the day Najimy was offered a transfer to New York through her job at the phone company. From there, the two quickly headed toward The Great White Way É or at least somewhere nearby.

"We started doing 1 a.m. shows at Don't Tell Mamma -- which is another gay bar and a theme throughout the story -- and then at The Second Stage, a little off-Broadway [house]," Najimy recalls. Soon Kathy & Mo was touring, scoring larger off-Broadway runs, and eventually their two HBO specials materialized.

"You write what you know, and since we're political creatures and feminists, that came out in our writing," Gaffney observes, pointing out that being funny also goes along with that sensibility.

"We're not running around like dour dollies going, ÔOoh, it's too bad about the gays... Too bad about abortionÉ' That's not how we write. We're funny people when we're hanging around each other, that's how we view life. But tinged with that is a feeling of responsibility about the things that go on around us, about the people we love or the people we are. So that's how the show [developed]."

Then in 1991, after completing their commitments to HBO and various theaters, Najimy and Gaffney broke up their act, but it wasn't nearly as dramatic as is often portrayed in the media. "We were not getting along, it had been 10 years of looking at each other and working together and I really didn't want to be Kathy & Mo my whole life," Najimy says. "It was really scary to break up but things worked out."

Kathy & Mo finally did return to off-Broadway last year at The Second Stage in New York. There was no major reunion, per se -- the two have remained friends even after the show's end -- but the audience turnout was so sensational that the two decided to release a DVD that includes both of their HBO specials plus hours of unseen footage from their entire career. However, there was a slight glitch with that plan.

"The two new pieces we wrote for this last tour weren't filmed," explains Najimy, and in order to make the DVD a true definitive history of their career they approached Jon Imparato, director of the Lily Tomlin/Jane Wagner Cultural Arts Program at the L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center, to use his stage for a taping. Imparato explained that the net proceeds from all performances help the Center provide everything from free and low-cost health, mental health, HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention, to legal, social, educational services, and beyond. This easily tapped into the duo's political/activist spirit and they agreed to perform a benefit show. "That started our relationship with Jon," says Najimy. "And we had such a great experience that when he said he had another opening in September, we said sure."

Thus the legend of Kathy & Mo continues, but as Najimy and Gaffney revisit their characters it's with a renewed excitement, knowing that they now bring different perspectives to their own writing and that translates to both their performances and the audience's reception. "Besides, it's a benefit," says Najimy. "It's not for fame, it's not for money, it's clearly for the Gay Center and because we're enjoying being together."

The Kathy & Mo Show will run at The Village at Ed Gould Plaza, 1125 N. McCadden Pl., L.A.,Friday and Saturday, Sept. 23-24, at 8 p.m. For more information, call (323) 860-7300.