Kathy Najimy Finds There’s Life After ‘Kathy and Mo Show’

Men have monopolized all the great comedy teams. But when Kathy Najimy (with Mo Gaffney) launched “The Kathy and Mo Show” in the early ‘80s, enjoyed a long run at the Los Angeles Theatre Center and went on to an Obie-winning engagement in New York and an HBO special that aired last November, it looked like the monopoly was over.

Guess again. “We’ve been tempted with a lot of TV offers to do a ‘Kathy and Mo thing,’ ” Najimy says, “but I didn’t want to be part of a team for my whole career. Once you’re on network TV with that kind of act, you gain a national identity and get stuck with it. I was Kathy Najimy before I met Mo--and the same for Mo.”

And before “Kathy and Mo,” Najimy was a director. She’s back at it, directing actress-comedienne Carissa Channing’s one-woman show “I Can Fit My Fist in My Mouth,” at Theatre/Theater.

Channing, struggling to move beyond comedy clubs into theaters, saw “Kathy and Mo” in New York and persuaded Najimy to help her develop material for a solo show. “Since I’d also performed my own one-woman show,” Najimy says, “I knew what problems she’d have, sort of like how a coach who used to play football understands the players. Right away, I thought Carissa was a young Lucille Ball. People are amazed that she’s so beautiful and able to make herself look so funny.”

Najimy hasn’t parted ways with Gaffney though: They’re writing a feature script for Hollywood Pictures, as well as preparing a second special for HBO. The New York-based comic finds herself constantly hopping from coast to coast--planning projects with CBS and Bette Midler, or acting in such films as “Soapdish” (she was Sally Field’s costumer) and the upcoming “This Is My Life,” with Julie Kavner. The tough part is finding time for her musician boyfriend John Boswell, who’s also constantly on the road backing Judy Collins and other acts.

“We just spend the money to get together, or travel together,” says Najimy. “It’s difficult, but it’s what we have to do for each other.”