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.
Photo by Bjorn Bolinder
Core Company
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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
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Co-Founder, Director, Producer
is a New York-based director, producer, and Co-Founder of Recent Cutbacks whose work has been seen across the US, UK, and Australia. Kristin directed the Off-Broadway hit Puffs: Or, Seven Increasingly Eventful Years at a Certain School of Magic and Magic and its live capture (available on Amazon and iTunes). Other directing includes projects for Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, Ensemble Studio Theater, Powerhouse Theater, New Georges, All For One, The Brick Exponential Festival, PEN America's Prison Writing Program, Ma-Yi, Columbia University, the University of Florida, and many others. Assistantships include Michael Greif (Far From Heaven), Trip Cullman (Choir Boy), and Wendy C. Goldberg (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?). She is a also proud company member of Broken Box Mime. kristinmccarthyparker.com. @kristinmcparker
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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. @kvschaefer
Recent Collaborators
Past Collaborators
Tom Abeel
Becky Baumwoll
Langston Belton
Dinah Berkeley
Lauren Berst
Esti Bernstein
Dane Brandon
Connar Brown
Camila Canó-Flaviá
David Carl
Tia Cassmira
Trey Coates-Mitchell
Jodi Cotton
Tom Cryan
Anna Dart
Darian Dauchan
Julie Ann Earls
Anya Gibian
Abby Gilster
Sarah Godwin
Alex Gould
Jo Goforth
Blake Habermann
Dillon Heape
Lindsley Howard
Rachel Johanson
Paul Kite
Liz Leimkuhler
Lee Lillis
Michael Lukk Litwak
Evan Maltby
Andy Manjuck
Caitlin McCarthy
Grant McCord
Riley McIlveen
Sonia Mena
Tasha Milkman
Allyson Morgan
Connor O’Sullivan
Alexis Pancrazi
Joel Perez
Kayla Prestel
Christine Pynn
Max Reinhardsen
Kristin Renn Parker
Dale Sampson
Lake Simons
Julie Ann Arbiter Simpson
Gianmarco Soresi
Joshua Sparks
Ashlee Springer
Joanna Fern Thomas
Michelle Vo
Colin Waitt
Danny Wilfred
Libby Zambrano
Wes Zurick
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.