In July, D’yan Forest celebrated her 90th birthday by performing a one-woman comedy show at Joe’s Pub in Manhattan for more than 100 people. According to Guinness World Records, she is the oldest female comedian in the world.
“I always open with my age: ‘I’m putting it out there right away in case I don’t make it through the show,’” Ms. Forest said. “That gets them laughing no matter who’s in the audience.”
Before she was making people laugh, Ms. Forest was performing cabaret and playing the piano, singing mostly in French. But after the Sept. 11 attacks, she said, people stopped coming to her shows. “They went to happier places, like comedy clubs,” she said.
Unable to work, she shifted gears and in 2003 hired a comedy coach. Within three weeks she was performing 10-minute sets throughout Manhattan, including at Comic Strip Live and Carolines on Broadway.
Ms. Forest grew up in Newton, Mass., and moved to a one-bedroom apartment in the West Village in 1966 after a divorce and a two-year stint “swinging and performing,” she said, in Paris. All of it is recounted in her self-published memoir, “I Did It My Ways.”
EARLY RISE I wake up at 7 a.m. naturally. I wish I slept longer. Being 90, I’m tired. I used to make coffee on the stove top. My building has been without gas for a year and a half, so I do it in this electric thing. Then I retrieve The New York Times from my hallway. There’s a pleasure to turning the pages.
LIKE I’M IN PARIS I get dressed and go to Mah-Ze-Dahr Bakery on Greenwich Avenue. Everyone knows me so it’s like visiting friends and lets me pretend I’m in Paris. I’ll drink a cappuccino and have a chocolate croissant. This is my modus operandi of life. Then I go home and look at the computer. I have a publicist, R. Couri Hay, and his assistant sends me emails about jobs, interviews, podcasts and comedy spots.
STRESS-FREE SWIM By 11 I’m fed up with the computer. I put on a bathing suit with a skirt — it’s an old lady’s one-piece that covers everything — and walk two blocks to Equinox on Greenwich Avenue and swim for 20 minutes. I’ve been swimming since I was 3. The whole thing is a schlep, but it loosens up and activates every muscle I have without adding stress or strain on my body.
NEW MATERIAL I’m home by noon. I rest for 10 minutes and eat a prepared meal I bought during the week at Citarella. Usually it’s rotisserie chicken, cooked salmon or sushi. I don’t cook so I’m one of the single people who keep that store in business.
For the next two or three hours I memorize what I’ll be performing for my show. I’m constantly writing new material. My comedy is making fun of myself, my age and sex. I go onstage and people laugh with me, not at me, and that warms my heart. I work on tightness and rhythm and say everything out loud. A couple of paragraphs could take a couple of weeks to perfect. Every few lines there’s a joke or punchline. Then I practice playing my ukulele because I do parodies of well-known songs with my own words. I turned “Bye Bye Blackbird” into “Bi-Bi-Sexual.” And “I’m Singing in the Rain” to “I’m Swinging on the Seine.”
GOLF PRACTICE If I’m up to it, I’ll take a taxi — because I’m carrying my golf clubs — to Chelsea Piers and practice my swing. I have 14 clubs from different companies. I have a small condo in Southampton, and sometimes I play out there. I hit about 50 balls over the next hour. You have to practice your swing because your body changes every year. I want to keep the same body and brain that I’ve had since I was young.
I’m home by 4 and at the computer again because my iPhone is too small. I remember life without it. To us older people, it’s a miracle that you don’t have to go home to answer a call. It’s also horrible. I’d like to go back to a time when it was slower. If I’m not performing, I’ll watch golf on TV, which relaxes me because it’s so boring and I fall asleep.
FOOD AND FRIENDS Most Sundays I go out for dinner to Jane’s or Rosemary’s, which are in the neighborhood, around 6 or 7, with a friend, like Felicia, whom I met at a bar in the Village 50 years ago. We’ve been friends since and talk every night. Older people check in with each other to make sure we’re all still alive. I have friends of all ages because friends my age have died and young people keep me alive. No one gives a damn how old you are, as long as you’re interesting. I’ve learned to drink mimosas, so I order one of those at dinner. It’s light and refreshing and celebratory. There were no mimosas when I was growing up. It’s what the kids drink.
PERFORMING Once a month Gotham Comedy Club does two special Sunday shows. I usually do the 5 o’clock show and I always ask if I can go second or third. I like to be at the beginning and hate the waiting. Comedians love to chitchat; I just want to do my bit. Most of them look at me like, “What’s this old lady doing here?” Then I go on and everyone is laughing, and I know the comedians are surprised. Performing brings me a huge sense of happiness and success I never thought possible. I’m on for 10 minutes. I always finish with a parody song. I stick around for as long as I can, but I’m tired and it’s been a long day.
NIGHT READING If I’m home early it’s “60 Minutes.” If I’ve missed that, and it’s late, I like to read. One of my interests is the Holocaust. My whole family was killed in Riga, which is near Estonia and Lithuania. The Germans shipped them there to be exterminated. I lived through World War II. We thought we were fighting a war to end all wars; now it feels like it’s all coming back, and that’s horrific. Right now I’m reading “The Nazis Knew My Name: A Remarkable Story of Survival and Courage in Auschwitz,” by Magda Hellinger and Maya Lee. By 10 I take Ambien and I’m out.
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