Interview: Mo Gaffney Talks Feminists, Funny Women, and the Relevancy of PARALLEL LIVES 35 Years Later

In the opening scene of PARALLEL LIVES, two Supreme Beings plan the beginning of the world with the relish of two slightly sadistic suburban wives decorating a living room. From this moment, the audience is whisked through a series of skits that catapult them into the outrageous universe of comediennes Kathy Najimy and Mo Gaffney.

Najimy and Gaffney (better known as Kathy and Mo) first performed PARALLEL LIVES in 1983 at The Old Town Theatre in San Diego. Six years later, they opened the show off-Broadway at The Westside Theatre in New York and in 1991, PARALLEL LIVES became an HBO special. Gaffney says she and Najimy wrote the show because there weren't a lot of roles for "real women" at that time.

"We just wrote it because nobody was hiring women, particularly at that time, that didn't fit into a particular box," Gaffney says. "We lived in a world where there were gay people and feminists and strong women and funny women, and we didn't see a whole lot of that. So that's what we decided to do a show about, kind of what we knew and what we didn't see."

"We still think we are the funniest people on the planet, and I think we come at things in a particular way together that's kind of fantastic," she adds.

Later this month, Emily Levinstone and Keith Liles step into Kathy and Mo's shoes for the opening of PARALLEL LIVES at Burning Coal Theatre as part of the North Carolina Women's Theatre Festival. Judy Long, who is making her Raleigh directorial debut, says the show covers themes that are relevant today as they were 35 years ago, including women's rights, LGBTQ rights, and acceptance.

"The humor is relevant today and the issues are still relevant today," says Long. "But thank God Kathy and Mo are so brilliant that the humor still holds up and we can still talk about it and we can still think about it and we can still laugh about it."

"If it's relevant and people still get something out of it, I think that's great," says Gaffney. "But then with some of it, we should have certainly moved on."

Long says she pitched the show to The Women's Theatre Festival because the show has been such an important part of her life, and the lives of others, for so long.

"When it first came on HBO in the early 90's, it was so groundbreaking to me at that time because they were dealing with issues of feminism and homosexuality and at that point I had just come out to my mother, and although my mother was amazing and wonderful, she had to get used to the idea of me being gay person," Long says. "Through the humor that Kathy and Mo had at that time and still do today, they let my mom and I laugh about it."

"It was like the weight of the world released," she adds.

Gaffney says she's delighted if the show helps anybody or eases anybody's way.

"You know how it is when you see something, and it happens to me all the time, I'll see something, and I'll think, 'oh my God, I feel just like that,' or 'I was thinking that just the other day.' I love it when that happens to me," she says. "It makes you feel like there's a place for you in the world and hopefully that's how they'll feel when they see our show."

"The bottom line is that it's hard to be in this country right now, and it has been for a while, for anybody who isn't a straight, white man," Gaffney adds. "So hopefully our show will speak to those people who've felt they haven't been spoken to. It's our inclusive thing. It's for the rest of us."

PARALLEL LIVES runs June 29th - July 7th at Burning Coal Theatre as part of the North Carolina Women's Theatre Festival. For more information, visit:

https://www.womenstheatrefestival.com/paraell-lives

Photo credit: Kathy Najimy and Mo Gaffney in PARALLEL LIVES

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