| River Butcher | |
|---|---|
 River Butcher | |
| Born | August 12, 1982 Akron, Ohio, U.S. |
| Medium | Stand-up, television, radio, internet |
| Alma mater | University of Akron |
| Years active | 2012–present |
| Spouse | |
| Notable works and roles | Take My Wife |
River Buddy Butcher [1] (Born August 12, 1982) is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, producer, and podcast host. Butcher is best known for personal, observational comedy focused on his vegetarianism, feminism, love of baseball, and experiences as a queer person. [2]
Butcher was raised in the Kenmore neighborhood of Akron, Ohio, [3] [4] an only child whose parents divorced when Butcher was one month old. [5] He attended Our Lady of the Elms High School [6] and graduated from Archbishop Hoban High School in 2001. [7]
While attending the University of Akron, Butcher worked at a skateboard shop named Summer Squall [8] and an indoor skating facility called Joe's Skate Park, [9] and helped design a skatepark that opened in Akron in 2001. [9] He graduated from the University of Akron with a degree in printmaking in 2005. [7] [5] Butcher attended graduate school at University of Notre Dame. [7]
In 2006, Butcher had an exhibit at a printmaker’s show called "Prints at an Exposition". [10] This exhibit, which was a series of prints on muslin showing the body's organs, was inspired by his own appendectomy. [10]
Butcher began his comedy career performing improv in Chicago at The Second City and has since performed stand-up at clubs including Zanies, the Jukebox, and Flappers, as well as Chicago Underground Comedy, The Hideout, The Lincoln Lodge, UCB, Cole's, and Meltdown. [11] [12] He made his late-night debut on Conan in June 2016. [13] [14]
In the fall of 2014, Butcher appeared alongside Cameron Esposito in a series of videos for BuzzFeed Motion Pictures titled "Ask a Lesbian". [15] [16] Butcher and Esposito also co-hosted the web series "She Said" for Amy Poehler's Smart Girls Network. [17] The two wrote and starred together again in Take My Wife, on the comedy streaming service Seeso. [18] [19] Butcher also co-hosted the stand-up comedy podcast Put Your Hands Together with Cameron Esposito, which was recorded weekly in front of a live audience at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in Los Angeles until it ended in July 2019. [20] [21] [22]
His first comedy album Butcher was released in August 2016 by the independent record label Kill Rock Stars. [23] [24] The set was performed at Mississippi Studios in Portland, Oregon. [25] It debuted at number one on iTunes. [5]
In 2016, he appeared in 8 episodes of the first season of Adam Ruins Everything . He returned in 2017 for one additional appearance.
In 2018, he started hosting a baseball-focused podcast called Three Swings. [26]
In 2021, he appeared on Comedy Central Stand Up Presenting called A Different Kind of Dude. [27]
As stated in an interview, Butcher said his strongest comedy influences are Rosie O'Donnell, Ellen DeGeneres, Brett Butler, Elayne Boosler, Maria Bamford, and Paul F. Tompkins. [28]
Butcher provided the voice for Asher, a fictional nonbinary character, for the animated series Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts , released in 2020.
Butcher met fellow comedian Cameron Esposito at an open mic hosted by Esposito. [29] The two soon started collaborating and then began to date. [29] On December 12, 2015, Butcher and Esposito married onstage at The Hideout in Esposito's hometown of Chicago, Illinois. [30] [31] In August 2018, Butcher and Esposito announced their separation to "live individual lives." [32] Their split was covered in a Vanity Fair article. [31] In September 2019, Esposito wrote an article for the New York Times discussing the couple's pending divorce. [33]
Butcher is a trans man and uses he and they pronouns. [1] [34] In November 2021, Butcher announced that he had changed his name to River. [1]
Butcher endorsed Kenneth Mejia and Eunisses Hernandez during the 2022 Los Angeles elections. [35] [36]
| Title | Medium | Role | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Put Your Hands Together | Podcast | Host | 2013–2019 |
| Wham Bam Pow | Podcast | Host | 2013–2015 |
| She Said | Web Video Series | Host | 2015 |
| Bajillion Dollar Propertie$ | Television | Jamie | 2016 |
| Conan [13] | Television | Guest | 2016 |
| Take My Wife [37] | Television | Self | 2016–2018 |
| Adam Ruins Everything | Television | Self | 2016 |
| The Meltdown with Jonah and Kumail | Television | Guest | 2016 |
| HarmonQuest | Television | Guest | 2016 |
| Queery | Podcast | Guest | 2018 |
| Good Mythical Morning | YouTube | Guest | 2018 |
| Three Swings | Podcast | Host | 2018–present |
| Good Trouble | Television | Lindsay Brady | 2019–2021 |
| Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts | Television | Voice of Asher | 2020 |
| Friendsgiving | Film | Denim | 2020 |
WEWS-TV is a television station in Cleveland, Ohio, United States, affiliated with ABC. It has been owned by the E. W. Scripps Company since its inception in 1946, making it one of three stations that have been built and signed on by Scripps. WEWS-TV's studios are located on Euclid Avenue in Downtown Cleveland, and its transmitter is located in suburban Parma.
WVIZ is a PBS member television station in Cleveland, Ohio, United States. It is owned by Ideastream Public Media alongside classical music station WCLV and co-managed with Kent State University–owned WKSU, the NPR member for both Cleveland and Akron. The three stations share studio facilities at the Idea Center on Playhouse Square in Downtown Cleveland; WVIZ's transmitter is located in suburban Parma, Ohio.
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Ideastream is the main public broadcaster in Cleveland, Ohio, United States, serving both Greater Cleveland and much of Northeast Ohio. Its headquarters, newsroom, and radio and television studios are located at the Idea Center in Playhouse Square in Downtown Cleveland. It operates WKSU, the region's main radio news service aligned with NPR, and owns classical music/jazz outlet WCLV and Cleveland PBS member station WVIZ.
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