Byrne Piven Family, Real Name, Spouse, Profession, Eye Color, body stats, Feet Size, Wiki

Byrne Piven Family, Real Name, Spouse, Profession, Eye Color, body stats, Feet Size, Wiki

Byrne Piven (September 24, 1929 â€" February 18, 2002) was an American

stage actor, director, and co-founder of the Playwrights Theatre Club,

a forerunner of The Second City.Piven was born Bernard Piven in

Scranton, Pennsylvania, the son of Katie (née Balaban) and Samuel

Piven, who were Ukrainian Jewish immigrants. He came to Chicago in

1954 and met Joyce Hiller at the University of Chicago. They were

married a short time later. In the 1950s, the Pivens were two of the

founding members of the Playwrights Theatre Club, along with Paul

Sills and David Shepard. Playwrights featured such budding stars as

Mike Nichols, Elaine May, Ed Asner and Barbara Harris.In the

mid-1950s, the Pivens moved to New York, where they studied with Uta

Hagen. Piven played the leads in several New York Shakespeare Festival

productions. He was also part of the Obie Award-winning cast of A

House Remembered.They returned to Chicago in 1967 to rejoin Sills,

Sheldon Patinkin, Bernie Sahlins and Joyce Sloane in forming Second

City Repertory and then Story Theatre. Piven, charismatic, balding and

bearded, with a beautifully resonant voice, spent some time as an

acting teacher at Northwestern University, offering his expertise in

improvisation as well as his peculiarly sage view of life, combining a

respect for zen and the torah. In 1972, he and his wife started the

Piven Theatre Workshop, partly to supplement their incomes, and partly

to have something for their children to do after school, both of whom

pursued acting and directing respectively.
Byrne Piven Family, Real Name, Spouse, Profession, Eye Color, body stats, Feet Size, Wiki


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