At 91, D’yan Forest Is Still Standing — And Still Slaying the Stage
At 91 years old, most people would consider slowing down, but D’yan Forest never got that memo. The Guinness World Record holder for “Oldest Working Comedian” is busier than ever—singing, strumming her ukulele, and cracking up audiences around the world with her quick wit, saucy stories, and unfiltered humor. Her recent one-woman show, A Gefilte Fish Out of Water, performed at Joe’s Pub on her 91st birthday, is proof that age doesn’t dull the funny bone—it sharpens it.
“I make sure I do some kind of exercise every day,” Forest says. “I walk the golf course, I go swimming. I try to take care of myself—and I never just sit and watch television.” That vitality carries into her shows, which are a riotous mix of stand-up, storytelling, and music. “I make fun of myself,” she says. “I never make fun of the people in the audience. People can’t believe that a 91-year-old can be young in the brain.”
Her humor is personal, sometimes risqué, and always authentic. She jokes about aging, love, and the absurdities of modern life, weaving in songs that punctuate her stories. “I do a one-woman show where for an hour and a half I do my songs and then comedy about my life,” she says. “You never know when you see D’yan Forest what the heck she’ll do next.”
Forest’s career spans continents and decades. She’s performed in New York, Paris, Edinburgh, and even Ethiopia, taking the stage in multiple languages. “I’ve performed in France since the sixties,” she says. “Now I go back every year for a couple of weeks. I do it in French—or English if there are more English people in the audience.”
The cultural contrasts fascinate her. “In France, you have to be careful,” she explains. “They’re less free than they were 20 or 30 years ago. If I make fun of sex, they don’t accept it. They’re getting more conservative, while in America, everybody is sort of free.” That ability to read a room has become one of her greatest strengths. “By my second line, I can tell whether the audience is going to have trouble,” she says. “Then I start cutting out what I know they won’t understand and put in other stuff that I know they will. No audience is the same—it keeps your brain working.”
Her adaptive style comes from experience, but also from instinct. “Some comics do joke after joke after joke—the same for years. I change it every show depending on the audience,” she says. “That’s what makes it exciting.”
Ironically, Forest never set out to be a comedian. “I was a singer,” she says. “I sang French all over the world pretending I was French. When I had to waste time, I started joking with the audience a little. Then I realized I could joke—but I didn’t know I was funny until I started doing comedy.”
Her musical background—she still writes songs with a team of collaborators—adds a unique twist to her sets. “I have writers in Britain and America,” she admits. “I give them the ideas, and they put it in the right song and give it the punchline. Anybody who’s a really good comedian has writers.”
Her inspiration comes from comedians who, like her, turned their own lives into material. “What makes me laugh is when comics do something unusual about their life,” she says. “Like me, they make fun of themselves or where they’ve been. If it’s a little different from the average comedy stuff, then I laugh.”
Forest’s long career has placed her alongside some of the biggest names in comedy. She’s shared stages with Jerry Seinfeld, Jim Gaffigan, and Joan Rivers, who once affectionately called her “the filthy ukulele player.” Forest laughs when recalling the memory. “I said, ‘No, Joan, I’m just risqué.’ After that, we’d meet after her shows and talk. She was just lovely.”
Rivers, she says, inspired her honesty and edge. “I grew up with Jack Benny and Bob Hope. That was the comedy of my day. I didn’t even know that was ‘comedy’—I just loved listening to it on the radio. I never got into a comedy club until I started performing 20 years ago. Now, of course, I’m in the middle of it. Hallelujah!”
Performing now among mostly twenty- and thirty-somethings, Forest stands out not just for her age, but for her timeless sense of humor. “The fellows all have beards, the young women are 22,” she laughs. “And I think, ‘Oh my God, are they going to like me?’ But then I’m a breath of fresh air. People are amazed that my comedy is as young as these young people’s.”
She credits her youthful perspective to curiosity. “I’m always running to movies, shows—whatever’s happening,” she says. “That’s how I get material.” Her humor, she insists, is never political. “I stay away from politics because that’ll aggravate half the audience,” she explains. “I talk about life—what happens at the golf club, in my day-to-day, getting older. The young people love it. And the old people come up to me and say, ‘I wish I could do what you did when you were younger.’ Everybody, no matter what age, identifies with me.”
Forest’s resilience is summed up by one of her favorite show finales: Stephen Sondheim’s “I’m Still Here.” During a recent performance in London, she accidentally knocked over her glass of Coca-Cola mid-song. “The coke and the glass went all over the stage,” she recalls. “Everybody laughed and applauded—they thought it was part of the act! When I go to London again, it’s going to be part of the act.”
That story captures what makes D’yan Forest extraordinary: her ability to turn any moment—planned or not—into a laugh. “It took me only 91 years,” she says, “but I’m getting there. I never thought I’d be a comedian, but now I look at the world funny. Anything that goes on, I think, ‘This is crazy,’ and I make a joke about it.”
Still here, still funny, and still proving that laughter, like life, is best enjoyed without a script.