| River Butcher | |
| Birth Date: | 12 August 1982 |
| Birth Place: | Akron, Ohio, U.S. |
| Medium: | Stand-up, television, radio, internet |
| Active: | 2012–present |
| Notable Work: | Take My Wife |
| Alma Mater: | University of Akron |
River Buddy Butcher (formerly Rhea Harriett Butcher, 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.[1]
Butcher was raised in the Kenmore neighborhood of Akron, Ohio,[2] [3] an only child whose parents divorced when Butcher was one month old.[4] He attended Our Lady of the Elms High School[5] and graduated from Archbishop Hoban High School in 2001.[6]
While attending the University of Akron, Butcher worked at a skateboard shop named Summer Squall[7] and an indoor skating facility called Joe's Skate Park,[8] and helped design a skatepark that opened in Akron in 2001.[8] He graduated from the University of Akron with a degree in printmaking in 2005.[6] Butcher attended graduate school at University of Notre Dame.[6]
In 2006, Butcher had an exhibit at a printmaker’s show called "Prints at an Exposition".[9] This exhibit, which was a series of prints on muslin showing the body's organs, was inspired by his own appendectomy.[9]
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.[10] [11] He made his late-night debut on Conan in June 2016.[12] [13]
In the fall of 2014, Butcher appeared alongside Cameron Esposito in a series of videos for BuzzFeed Motion Pictures titled "Ask a Lesbian".[14] [15] Butcher and Esposito also co-hosted the web series "She Said" for Amy Poehler's Smart Girls Network.[16] The two wrote and starred together again in Take My Wife, on the comedy streaming service Seeso.[17] [18] 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.[19] [20] [21]
His first comedy album Butcher was released in August 2016 by the independent record label Kill Rock Stars.[22] [23] The set was performed at Mississippi Studios in Portland, Oregon.[24] It debuted at number one on iTunes.
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.[25]
In 2021, he appeared on Comedy Central Stand Up Presenting called A Different Kind of Dude.
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.[26]
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.[27] The two soon started collaborating and then began to date.[27] On December 12, 2015, Butcher and Esposito married onstage at The Hideout in Esposito's hometown of Chicago, Illinois.[28] [29] In August 2018, Butcher and Esposito announced their separation to "live individual lives."[30] Their split was covered in a Vanity Fair article. In September 2019, Esposito wrote an article for the New York Times discussing the couple's pending divorce.[31]
Butcher is a trans man and uses he and they pronouns.[32] In November 2021, Butcher announced that he had changed his name to River.
Butcher endorsed Kenneth Mejia and Eunisses Hernandez during the 2022 Los Angeles elections.[33] [34]
| 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 | Television | Guest | 2016 | |
| Take My Wife[35] | 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 |