Name Shaun Breidbart | Role Comedian | |
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Education Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania | ||
Shaun Eli Breidbart Centerpiece joke clean kosher comedy
Shaun Eli Breidbart (born 1961) is an American stand-up comedian and comedy writer. Shaun graduated from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania with dual majors in marketing and economics. While at Penn he was a member of the Varsity Lightweight Crew (rowing team) and he taught Advanced Lifesaving as an American Red Cross Water Safety Instructor while pursuing his undergraduate degree and taking a few graduate courses outside of his majors.
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The New York Times frequently publishes his letters to the editor, and he has the unmatched record of having two letters published the same day. His writing has also been published in several other newspapers and magazines.
Before pursuing a career in comedy, Shaun worked in banking in NYC. He is a licensed, instrument-rated pilot and a former competitive sculler and dragon-boat racer.
Comedy career
Shaun Eli began his professional comedy career by selling jokes free-lance to Jay Leno when Leno took over The Tonight Show from long-time host Johnny Carson. He has also sold monologue material to other late-night talk show hosts. Shaun began performing stand-up in NYC in 2003 after taking a comedy class. He was the first comic to audition in NYC for the second season of NBC's Last Comic Standing. When the two auditioners asked him if he was nervous because he was performing in front of just two people he replied "No, I've performed for audiences half your size." (They laughed but he was also the first comic cut from the auditions.)
In a Fortune Magazine article Jay Leno cited Shaun's material as the type of smart comedy he likes to have in his TV monologue. Reader's Digest referred to him as one of the country's smartest comics.
In 2005 Shaun formed the Ivy League Comedy Showcase to showcase comedians performing clean, smart comedy. The show, often called Ivy Stand-up, was the subject of a front-page story in the Philadelphia Inquirer and has been featured on CBS News. He has also been extensively quoted in the media, in such publications as the Denver Post, The Forward, and on CNN.
Shaun's comedy styles include observational and story-telling. His subjects include himself & his family, growing up in NYC and Scarsdale, politics, fighting ethnic stereotypes, religion and dating, as well as some surreal comedy in the style of Steven Wright and Mitch Hedberg. He also has a one-man show "Business School... in About an Hour" which uses jokes and stories from the life of a stand-up comic to illustrate business points.
Shaun's writings include a short children's story "A Tale of Two Kiddies," several screenplays, two unfilmed Seinfeld episodes, a guide to hiring comedians, an article on attorneys who became stand-up comedians and an article on women in stand-up comedy.