Best of the Fest: Steve Byrne. Colin Jost and more

Colin Jost is a head writer at Saturday Night Live and a touring stand-up comedian. He’s appeared on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, TBS and at the Just For Laughs comedy festival in Montreal. Colin’s been performing since the 6th grade, when his teachers let him and his friends reenact SNL sketches and read David Letterman Top Ten lists in front of the entire school. He did Speech and Debate at Regis High School in Manhattan, then commuted home to Staten Island to be in musicals, even though he sings like a monster. Somehow he’s appeared in Fiddler on the Roof over a thousand times. Colin studied “the History and Literature of Russia and Britain” at Harvard, though he remembers very little Russian and knows zero British history except that they used to have a Queen back in the 21st Century. He mostly wrote and drank for the Harvard Lampoon and helped create Facebook*. In addition to his work on SNL, Colin writes screenplays and has been lucky enough to perform stand-up all over the country during the past eight years. Colin resides in New York, and in the hearts of children everywhere. * via non-involvement

In just a few short years, Steve Byrne has risen through the ranks of the comedy world to become one of the industry’s most innovative and sought-after performers. With his high-energy, physical style of comedy, Byrne has evolved throughout the years into an extremely versatile entertainer that delivers on a day-to-day basis.  Hailing from Pittsburgh, PA, Steve Byrne was born to a Korean mother and an Irish father. His unique background has given him the base comedic material for his first television show, Sullivan & Son. Byrne released a one hour standup comedy special, CHAMPION, on Netflix which then became a live show on the road, Steve Byrne & the Cast of Sullivan & Son Comedy Tour, along with his castmates: Ahmed Ahmed, Owen Benjamin and Roy Wood Jr. After winning TBS’ cutthroat competition, the Myspace Standup or Sitdown Comedy Challenge, Byrne was hurtled into a brilliant television and film career.  As his popularity began to expand, Byrne was featured in his very own half-hour Comedy Central Presents which was soon voted as one of the best specials of all time in the Comedy Central Standup Showdown. His hilarious standup has been seen on NBC’s The Tonight Show, ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live, CBS’s The Late Late Show and BET’s Comic View. In 2008, Byrne’s first one-hour special, Steve Byrne’s Happy Hour, premiered on Comedy Central and further cemented his star status. Packing an impressively wide range of appeal, Byrne’s comedy soon landed him on the The History of the Joke on the History Channel and the Discovery Channel’s The Science of Laughter.  He has since appeared on some of TV’s hottest shows including ABC’s The Middle, The Chapelle Show, G4’s The International Sexy Ladies Show, The Howard Stern Show, Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn, The Very Funny Show, The Byrne Identity on Comedy Central and was a series regular on NBC’s The Real Wedding Crashers. A true international comedian, Byrne has performed to sold-out crowds around the world.  He has been a featured comic at the Just for Laughs Festival (in Montreal, Toronto and Chicago), HBO’s US Comedy Arts Festival in Las Vegas and the CanWest Comedy Fest in Vancouver.  He has been part of several national comedy tours including The Jameson Comedy Tour, Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Tour, The Kims of Comedy, The Camel Cigarettes Sin City Tour, and his own national Myspace Comedy tour.  Byrne even had the honor of opening for esteemed musical acts such as Kanye West, Mariah Carey, Modest Mouse, Puddle of Mudd, Spoon, Rev. Horton Heat and many more.  As a big supporter of the US troops, Steve also headlined several USO tours in Afghanistan, Iraq, Japan and Guam. Byrne has appeared in the hit comedies The Dilemma, Couples Retreat, Four Christmases and The Goods: The Don Ready Story.  His 2006 documentary, 13 or Bust, chronicles the attempt to perform 13 comedy shows in Manhattan in one night. Byrne’s lack of ego and outstanding work ethic has helped him become one of today’s most respected comedians.