Watch Tina Fey And Rachel Dratch’s Legendary, Long-Lost Two-Women Show

You know Tina Fey as many things: The show-runner and star of 30 Rock, the writer and co-star of Mean Girls, Saturday Night Live’s impersonator of Sarah Palin, the celebrated best friend of Amy Poehler.

But before she did all that, back when she’d just been appointed head writer at SNL (and had yet to appear on screen), Fey happened to book the stage at Chicago’s legendary Second City on the same night as another comic and SNL cast-member: Rachel Dratch.

Or so their story goes.

The performance that followed — a two women sketch show called Dratch and Fey — ran through 1999 and 2000 at Second City and Poehler’s own comedy club, the Upright Citizen Brigade. With no footage remaining, the show acquired legendary status as both comedians’ careers took off: Fey went on to do all those things in the first paragraph, and Dratch remained on SNL until 2006, played a number of characters through 30 Rock‘s seven seasons, and had guest spots in basically all of the shows: The King Of Queens, Monk, Frasier, Inside Amy Shumer, Ugly Betty, and cetera.

Would we ever find out what this show was about? Did it even really happen? Was there anyone in the audience with at least a hand-held video camera to film it?

It turns out yes, there was.

Overnight, that person uploaded tape of a 1999 performance of the show, which was directed by Jeff Richmond (now Fey’s husband, who she worked with on 30 Rock). The video quality is bad but the jokes are excellent, starting right at the beginning with a hilarious premise: both comics performing their one-women shows on stage, at the same time.

Dratch’s is a play about little-known (fictional?) women’s rights hero Edwina Garth Burnham, while Fey presents a series of monologues called ‘Cunt Poems’ — including the well-known sing-along, ‘My Mother’s Afraid Of Her Labia’. 

Thanks again, internet.