Sibling revelry: the Soloway sisters prove that talent runs in families--and gay and straight siblings can be best friends.

We are true spirit sisters," says Faith Soloway of her sister Jill. "We always want to do the same thing artistically." Echoes Jill: "We become cheerleaders for each other's most true selves, if that makes sense."

Yet while they both work in the arts--Faith as a successful producer of "schlock operas" in Boston, Jill writing for Six Feet Under in Los Angeles--the two have not worked together since the early 1990s, when they created the cult theatrical hit The Real Live Brady Bunch at the Annoyance Theater in Chicago, using exact scripts from classic Brady Bunch episodes to craft the show. When Jill first described Hollywood Hell House to her, says Faith, "it totally reminded me of the spirit behind when we first did the Bradys."

Indeed, Faith is flying out to Los Angeles for a onetime cameo in the Hell House as Pam, the straight Christian friend who tries to convince Steve, a gay man dying of AIDS, to accept Christianity and avoid going to hell. (She'll leave behind partner Harlyn Aizley, who wrote about getting pregnant with their daughter, now 2 1/2 years old, in Alyson Books' Buying Dad.)

Only 18 months apart, the Soloway sisters have always been very close. They had a blast trading phone calls over Claire Fisher's recent flirtation with lesbianism on Six Feet Under. "Edie and Anita are two women that I went to college with," explains Jill. "The real Edie couldn't be more different from Mena Suvari."

And yes, they are finally collaborating again. "We want to create something that speaks from our sisterhood," says Faith. The result? A rejected HBO pilot-turned-rock opera called Jewess Jones, about "a Jewish girl who finds out she's a messiah, much to her chagrin," says Jill. "Every time she gets her messianic powers, her hair gets curly."