D’yan Forest is, in the truest sense of the phrase, one of a kind.
That’s because at the age of 90, she is the oldest female stand-up comedian in the world, per Guinness World Records. And on Thursday and Sunday, as part of the New York City Fringe Festival, she is performing the last of her four-performance run of “90 Years of Songs and Scandal.” The one-woman show she co-wrote with Stephen Clarke and Eric Kornfeld covers topics like Forest’s Jewish upbringing and experiences in showbiz, as well as some raunchier subjects like dating apps and her exploits abroad.
Born Diana Shulman in Newton, Massachusetts, Forest has had a long and fruitful career in show business, originally singing and performing in cabarets before adding comedy to her repertoire.
After attending Middlebury College in Vermont and divorcing her husband in Boston, she moved to Paris in the 1960s. There she learned to sing in French — a skill that’s served her well in the decades since. In 1966 she moved to NYC, and has lived in the same West Village apartment building since.
With Forest’s run in the Fringe Festival heading toward the final stretch, the New York Jewish Week sat down with her in that very apartment, its walls covered with ukuleles and artwork from France, Israel and other cherished destinations.
Between some performances on the piano and ukulele, Forest chatted with us about her show, her golf game, and why she changed her name.
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
What can audiences expect when they see “90 Years of Songs and Scandal”?
At 90, I’m a little scandalous — not much, but enough so you’ll have fun. Because I’m fun, and I play my ukulele, and we sing all together, and I try to make it so everybody’s having a good time and joining in. If you’ve got nothing to do Easter Sunday afternoon, I’m performing.
You talk about your upbringing in the show. What was it like growing up Jewish in in Massachusetts?
I’m from Newton, which is right near Boston. First [Boston Jews] lived in the [city’s] Jewish community, but then they moved to Newton and Brookline, and they all became as non-Jewish as possible. There was only one temple in Newton, and then years later came another temple. It’s like, it wasn’t big. Here in New York, I guess being Jewish was always big. But we all assimilated. You know, my friends at the golf club [on Long Island], they know all the Yiddish words and all that. I only knew two Jewish words ‘til I got here to New York.
What were the words?
Mother would use [redacted]. And the other was, mother would say “Gey schluffen.” And I said, “What does that mean?” “Go to sleep!”
Your birth name was Diana Shulman. How did you come to take on the name D’yan Forest?
When I started in show business, and I was 23, 24, taking singing lessons, we had to choose a name — because you couldn’t be Jewish. So I picked the name Diana Lunn, my mother’s maiden name, and that didn’t quite work because they thought it was Lum; they thought I was Chinese when I walked into an audition. So I changed Lunn to something else, then something else wasn’t working. So then I had a nose job. And I wanted a name that nobody would know nothing. So now I’ve been D’yan Forest for 15, 20 years. Isn’t that ridiculous?
Have you grown any sort of personal connection to the name Forest?
No! At the golf club, which was, let’s say 60 or 70 percent Jewish, a lot of people didn’t know I was Jewish when I joined 30 years ago. So no, that’s showbiz, and then Shulman is business, and who I really am.
How does your Jewishness show up in your work?
Well, I bring up my ex-husband, Irwin Cohen. He didn’t turn out to be a great husband because he didn’t know how to pleasure a woman. And ordinarily that wouldn’t matter, but the woman was me. And I talk a lot about the experiences being Jewish in my life, things that would hit me and they’re funny. So I always bring in the Jewishness. I guess you just can’t avoid it — even with the nose job.
That idea of assimilation, or of having to hide your Jewishness, comes up a bunch in your work.
My writer Stephen [Clarke] picked up on this over the years. I was living in Paris for a couple years in 2017, ‘18, and I joined a golf club there. And then I talked to people and [said] my club is very Jewish out in the Hamptons, because Jews couldn’t join the private golf club. And people in France can’t believe this, they think we’re the land of the free and the brave. Even I’m finding Americans have no idea that we couldn’t join any golf clubs. And this is what started me to think of this show [that I’m working on]: [Stephen and I] have written a show seeing what happened to me from age 5 to, I’ll be 91 [when I perform it in July], all the antisemitism that I’ve had to approach.
Wow, we’ll stay tuned for that! And early in your career, when you performed, were you explicitly Jewish in your work?
When I came back from Paris [in the ‘60s] I still had a French accent. I have a French repertoire, everybody thinks I’m French. OK, so I became French, and for 20 years I just played piano, I did cabarets, I was French, Italian, Irish, whatever you want! And then I had to go to the Catskills, so Hebrew, I had to learn Yiddish.
What were the Catskills performances like?
I got to New York in the ‘60s, and I would go to these bungalow colonies. I’d get up there at 8 o’clock at night and they’d be like, “Are you the stripper?!” Everywhere I go! Because there was me, the singa, and then there was the strippa. I’d go on first and they wouldn’t really listen.
You are officially in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s oldest female stand-up comedian. Have you had any contact with the oldest male comedian? Is there a rivalry?
No. We’re trying to get not only the oldest female stand-up, but the oldest stand-up. And we have gone through the internet, and there isn’t anybody! But they’re very gender-based in Britain. So now I got them to change it to Oldest Stand-up Comedian, parentheses female… for another 800 bucks. [The $800 fee — which Forest said she did not intend to pay — was to receive the certificate within a week, rather than in a number of months.]
You have a Guinness World Record. You’ve spent decades in showbiz and are currently performing a one-woman show, while working on another one. What have you not done?
Well, right now I don’t have any partner! I’ve had them, maybe 20 years at a time. But the problem is — you’re 90, and a lot of my friends are dead. And that’s bad. And people think “You’re 90,” they don’t know that I’m a young 90. They have no idea. So, je suis seul — I’m lonely tonight. You know that French song? [singing] Je suis seul ce soir…
What’s your secret to a long life?
Oh, God help us. One reason is that I keep the brain active and I do comedy, I do the singing, I do one-woman shows, so I’m always memorizing. And it’s very hard when you’re 90 going on 91, but I think it’s working the brain. The other thing is I do a lot of sports. I swim every day either at the pool here or out in Southampton, and then I walk the golf course when it’s golfing weather. And I do at least nine holes walking, while all my other friends are in carts.
How far do you hit a driver?
Not very far. Because as you get older, it doesn’t go far. And this is what the men ask. You notice it was a man who asked this question?
What’s your favorite Jewish food?
Believe it or not, my favorite is gefilte fish, and my mother knew how to make it best of all. And even though she isn’t here anymore, I still have that chopper — because in the old days they didn’t buy it in the store, and Mother would spend the whole day chopping the fish. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.
Where in New York do you feel most Jewish?
I feel it in Southampton at my golf club! In the city here [my friends] are young people, they’re not Jewish, they’re all from different countries. But then I go to the golf club and most of the club is Jewish. And then I become Jewish for the summer.
What’s the wildest thing you’ve encountered in New York?
I got here in the ‘60s, and all the girls in their T-shirts weren’t wearing bras. And that, to me, was the craziest thing in the whole world. Now, this is… 2,000-whatever-it-is, 25. Now they’re walking down Greenwich Avenue with even the pupik [Yiddish for belly button] showing. And I feel like telling them, “Does your mother know you’re wearing that?” But probably the mother was wearing it too… I can’t help it, I’m conservative from Boston.
In the show, you bring up the story of when you were randomly sucker-punched in public.
Oh gosh, okay that’s the craziest thing. I try not to think about it — last year, July 10, at quarter of nine in the morning, I was standing on the corner ready to go swimming. And I was hit from behind, and I thought it was a phone pole, and it was so hard I fell to the ground. I got hit by a 31-year-old woman, if you can believe it — a sucker punch. And believe me, when I walk outside now — even in the Village — I look around because I guess you can never know.
Do you have any advice for young people in show business?
Get your college degree and have another business besides show business. Because show business is sometimes great, and then sometimes there’s zero. I happen to have a master’s in education, and that has kept me going through thick or thin. I was always able to substitute or teach somewhere.
You’ve been singing and performing music practically your whole life. How did you first get into stand-up comedy?
I made my living being a pianist and singer, in Paris, here in New York, and I did private shows, I did cabaret. And then 9/11 happened, and all U.S. union jobs were cancelled. Everything was cancelled, nobody was going out. And I got sick of not performing. So, I play golf with Caroline Hirsch, and she owned one of the biggest comedy clubs in Manhattan at the time (Carolines on Broadway). I said, “How do you get into comedy?” Right away I got in touch with a coach, and we started doing parodies on the ukulele. And that’s how I’m unique in the comedy world.
And you’re a record holder.
Oh yeah, I’m a record holder. I’m the oldest comedian in the whole world. And let’s hope I keep being here!
D’yan Forest is performing her one-woman show, “90 Years of Songs and Scandal,” at Wild Project (195 East 3rd St.) on Thursday, April 17 and Sunday, April 20. Get tickets here.
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