About Us

Recent Cutbacks is a creative ensemble founded in 2014. Our critically acclaimed work sits at the intersection of comedy and theater. We’re best known for our live movie parodies that fuse humor, nostalgia, and lo-fi spectacle.

Our projects invite audiences to see the world with a newfound exuberance and remind us why we fell in love with movies, theater, and storytelling in the first place.

Core Company

  • Co-Founder, Performer, Sound Design

    is a NY-based Dad and artist who performs, writes, directs, edits video, designs sound, and occasionally works as a foley artist. You can hear Nick in the Recent Cutbacks Audible Original: History of the 3rd Robot War, a 6-part parody lecture series he co-wrote and starred in as the T-Rex Professor. Nick is also a veteran company member of Broken Box Mime Theater, collaboratively creating and performing contemporary stories entirely through movement. These two companies form the backbone of Nick's creative work, but he's also performed at The PIT, UCB, 59E59, the Tank, Dixon Place, the Denver Center and the Kennedy Center. He's developed new work with All for One, New Dramatists, MTC, NY Stage and Film, Primary Stages, The Lark, and New Georges. Check out Nick's green-screen work at his website: nickabeel.com

  • Co-Founder, Director, Producer

    is a New York-based director of stage and film whose work has been produced across the US, in the UK and Australia. They are the director of the Off-Broadway hit Puffs and its live capture (Amazon /iTunes). With RCB, they’ve directed Hold On To Your Butts, Fly You Fools, KEVIN!!!!!,Next Day Thrones, and the company's Audible Original, Master Lecture Series. They have directed for Edinburgh Fringe, Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, Ensemble Studio Theater, Broken Box Mime Theater, All For One, PEN America's Prison Writing Program, Ma-Yi, Columbia University, University of Florida, and others: www.kristinmccarthyparker.com, @kristinmcparker

  • Co-Founder, Performer

    is a lifelong tinkerer/collaborator/maker, classically-trained actor and seeker of beautiful noise, powerful stories and collective liberation. His work has been seen and heard on the big/small screens, stages near/far, and all around the World Wide Web. He's based out of Brooklyn, NY, and is a proud co-founder of Recent Cutbacks. www.kyleschaefer.com
    Socials: @kvschaefer

Collaborators

Tom Abeel

Becky Baumwoll

Langston Belton

Dinah Berkeley

Lauren Berst

Esti Bernstein

Dane Brandon

Connar Brown

David Carl

Trey Coates-Mitchell

Jodi Cotton

Darian Dauchan

Abby Gilster

Sarah Godwin

Jo Goforth

Blake Habermann

Dillon Heape

Lindsley Howard

Rachel Johanson

Paul Kite

Michael Lukk Litwak

Caitlin McCarthy

Riley McIlveen

Sonia Mena

Allyson Morgan

Rosa Palmeri

Alexis Pancrazi

Kayla Prestel

Christine Pynn

Max Reinhardsen

Dale Sampson

Julie Ann Arbiter Simpson

Gianmarco Soresi

Ashlee Springer

Joanna Fern Thomas

Michelle Vo

Colin Waitt

Danny Wilfred

Libby Zambrano

In Memoriam

We are shaken and deeply saddened to have lost our beloved friend, colleague, collaborator, mentor, and star producer, Lanie Zipoy. Her devastating loss is felt throughout our extended Recent Cutbacks family, which represents only a fraction of the multitudinous NYC artist community of which Lanie was an indispensable and central force.

We reached out to her on a hunch in 2016 to help with some new projects and grow our company. We quickly hit it off, and the rest is RCB history. She innately understood and championed our aesthetic of serious reverence for the silliest, dumbest idea—immediately picking up what we were putting down. She was the best possible person for us, and we will be forever grateful for her generous gifts of insight, inspiration, passion, and wisdom.

Among too many things to mention, she helped bring us to APAP, connected us with the Alden Theatre in Virginia, facilitated our Audible Original commission, helped us hone pitches, found us grant opportunities, built invaluable relationships with new spaces, organizations and collaborators, and just checked in when it had been awhile.

Lanie was many, many things, but most of all she was a fierce advocate of artists and a masterful connector of networks. Despite being one of four people running our company, she in fact led numerous other full lives as a producer, writer, director, performer, curator, liaison, advocate, consultant, athlete . . . the list goes on.

Lanie’s excellence and prolific dedication to seemingly endless projects was one of her many superpowers. She was so many things to so many people, but was indisputably a bright light for everyone who knew her. She was open-hearted, joyful, brave, supportive, goofy, and brilliant. We are so lucky to have known her, been guided by her, and learned from her.

To have lost her so soon is an unspeakable tragedy. None of us will ever be the same. Our hearts go out particularly to her sister, Kat, and her family.

We celebrate Lanie’s life and spirit, mourn with her expansive community, and lift her up in creative energy and love.