D'yan Forest Breaks Barriers At 'Fringe Festival'

Love has no age. Love picks no gender. Love follows no rules.

At the age of 78, and after recovering from the pain of heartbreak, actress D’yan Forest has figured out that much. What she’s done with those revelations has landed her a run, starting Saturday, August 11, in the 16th annual New York International Fringe Festival. Her show, “I Married A Nun,” is a barrier-breaking, ukulele-playing, one-woman act exploring bisexuality in a way that Manhattan’s comedy scene has never seen before, she said.

And to boot, Ms. Forest is the comedy festival’s oldest performer.

“I love it. I love it!” she said of being the distinction during an interview on Wednesday morning at her second home in Southampton, nursing a hangover from her birthday party the night before. “I’m not Betty White, I’m not Joan Rivers. I want to be, but not yet. Betty’s 90, right? I’m only 78, and I’m doing what she talks about. I love being the oldest because I feel like I’m getting younger and younger every day.”

Ms. Forest cracked herself up, and continued, “This will get a rise out of people. I want to shock them. I want them to laugh. I want them to have fun.”

But the show isn’t a happy one all the way through, she said.

The true-life story begins midway, and the nun in question, Mary, has been deployed to Puerto Rico, which does more for her sex life than for her faith. She is drummed out of the nunnery, Ms. Forest reported. She then marries, divorces and moves with her 7-year-old daughter, Barbara, to Southampton, where she meets Ms. Forest through a mutual friend.

The women fall in love and Barbara “marries” them using a rhyme from the Dr. Seuss book “You’re Only Old Once,” Ms. Forest fondly recalled. They venture around the world together, seeing different sights while becoming a family.

“I wanted a daughter,” Ms. Forest said. “And now I had a daughter and a girlfriend and a home in the Hamptons. That’s what happened. I brought up the kid. And then, bye-bye, she moves back to Puerto Rico. She eventually came back. ‘Oh, I’ll never leave you again.’ Blah, blah, bullshit.”

Five years ago, Mary left. She moved to Rhode Island to help look after Barbara’s children, deserting Ms. Forest on the East End with nothing but her memories and a wounded heart. To escape her depression, Ms. Forest fled to Paris—where she had previously traveled after her own divorce in 1962, and where she had met and dated a woman for the first time.

It was a secret she kept from everyone.

“I decided to live,” she recalled, waving her hands in the air. “And the second part of the show is how I went to Paris again and decided to enjoy myself and go to these underground clubs. Of course I was scared to do it, still being a conservative Boston Jew, but I said, ‘Hell, what have I got to lose?’ Let me find what I did 50 years ago. In America, when you get to be in your 70s, people look at you as though you’re neutered and old. In Paris,” she paused, “never ends. Hell, I’m more active than ever.”

Approximately eight years ago, Ms. Forest—who previously made a living as an actress, model and international performer (she can sing in nine languages)—took the stage, for the first time, as a comedian. And in March 2011, she wrote and debuted “I Married A Nun,” which follows the true story of her life, though slightly exaggerated and understated in parts.

The show effectively outed Ms. Forest to her audiences, not to mention her friends, and broke down walls around the New York comedy clubs. She was petrified to take to the stage with her new material, she recalled, and couldn’t keep her hands from trembling like leaves.

There was nudity and gay humor on the scene, but nothing about bisexuality—let alone coming from a 77-year-old woman at the time, Ms. Forest said. After all, bisexuality was and still is a myth to many, the comedian explained, and considered downright traitorous in the lesbian community.

“To tell the truth, I was very embarrassed the first time I did it, and the second time, because it’s exposing myself,” she said. “And now, I’m getting used to it. But it was very hard because I was playing the world totally straight. Everybody looks at everybody one-dimensionally. It needs to be multi-dimensionally. See me as I am with my joy and my craziness and my hunger. My friends tell me, ‘C’mon, stop looking for somebody. You’re confused. Are you gay, bi or straight? Make up your mind!’”

She laughed, shaking her head.

“I can’t make up my mind,” she said, dramatically dropping her hands on her thighs. “What is important is to just love somebody. Find love.”

And Ms. Forest is on road to that goal herself. Almost three months ago, she met Eileen Kornfeld.

“She’s new in my life, and Jewish, so this makes the ending happy,” Ms. Forest said.

“She robbed the cradle a little bit,” Ms. Kornfeld said of Ms. Forest, as she made her way from the kitchen into the living room. “We’re the kind of couple that’s going to be the talk of the town.”

Ms. Kornfeld is 58.

D’yan Forest will perform “I Married A Nun” at the 16th annual New York International Fringe Festival on Saturday, August 11, at 9 p.m. at the Gene Frankel Theatre in Manhattan. Additional performances will follow on Tuesday, August 14, at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, August 16, at 5:45 p.m., Sunday, August 19, at noon and Tuesday, August 21, at 3:45 p.m. Tickets are $15 in advance or $18 at the door. For more information, visit dyanforest.com.