“Byrne and Joyce Piven are among Chicago theatre’s brightest lights, and The Piven Workshop one of the City’s most important cultural resources.”
— Robert Falls, Artistic Director, Goodman Theatre

Celebrating over 35 years as a nationally recognized and acclaimed theatre arts training center, Piven Theatre Workshop offers a full curriculum of classes for young people and adults. Within the nurturing environment of the Piven class, our students are free to liberate their imaginations, joyfully experiment with theatre games and improvisational techniques, and develop the skills to achieve spontaneity and truthfulness in each moment on stage.

With a focus on ensemble and artistic collaboration, each student is encouraged to express their own unique voice and point of view. Learning the value of self-expression while still maintaining a responsibility to the group, each artist develops an understanding of themselves as a unique and valuable part of the greater whole. Together, students discover the magic of presence, the mystery of timing, and the astonishment of self-expression and theatrical transformation.

“The Pivens challenge us by calling us to a higher idea of the theatre and of ourselves… Long may they thrive.”
— Bernard Sahlins, Co-Founder, Second City

The Mission of the Piven Theatre Workshop is to preserve a process of creative exploration that celebrates each individual's unique reative voice through an ensemble-based, community-oriented approach to theatre training and performance. This mission, as it has evolved for 35 years, is pursued through the three branches of the organization:

• the training center for children and adults, annually serving 1,000 students with mentorship opportunities for emerging theatre artists and educators
• the extensive scholarship and community outreach programs
• the professional Equity theatre committed to new works, literary adaptations and the Story Theatre form

The Piven Theatre Workshop is located in Evanston’s Noyes Cultural Arts Center. There, as one of the flagship organizations of the Center, it maintains extensive facilities including an administrative office, classrooms, and a professionally equipped 70-seat theatre. The Workshop annually serves approximately 1,000 students, children and adults, and 3,000 audience members from throughout the Chicago metropolitan area. The Workshop’s faculty and production teams are all active members of the Chicago theatre community and almost all of the Workshop faculty are also former Workshop students. 

“I doubt that 20 years ago the Pivens knew the tremendous impact that they would have on Evanston and the esteem in which the Evanston community holds them today… We in Evanston are very proud that the Pivens placed their stakes in Evanston, for their fame is really Evanston’s fame… they will continue to bring great ingenuity to all facets of theatre.”
— The Honorable Lorraine H. Morton, Mayor of Evanston

The Workshop Training Process

Students at the Workshop are placed in the class that is most appropriate for every step of his/her development. The focus in evaluating students is not to separate the students according to talent, but to ensure that the environment is most conducive to each student’s ability to learn, to experience and to grow. Upon completion of the term, students receive written evaluations and recommendations prepared by faculty and reviewed by Joyce Piven and Jennifer Green. Professional development seminars with the faculty and artistic leadership provide a time for teachers to discuss class curriculum and evaluate students’ progress.

Bringing Piven into Schools and Communities

Piven Theatre Workshop is actively involved in establishing residencies in organizations and schools throughout the Chicago area and has been established as a preferred provider by Illinois Arts Council to provide residency programs & professional development classes to teachers. In reaching out beyond our confines, we are able to bring into businesses, organizations and existing school curriculum a dynamic and creatively challenging experience for participants. We have recently partnered in this manner with Chute Middle School, Hubbard Woods School, YMCA, Unilever Corporation, Palliative Care Center & Hospice of the North Shore and Highland Park High School.

Alumni 

Many know the Piven Theatre Workshop for its celebrity alumni: John and Joan Cusack, Jeremy Piven, Aidan Quinn, Lili Taylor, Harry Lennix, Kate Walsh, Hope Davis, and many more. Yet for all the spawning of celebrities, the Piven Theatre Workshop’s greatest value may be to those many students who have taken into their lives and professions an enriched understanding of the human exchange and greater confidence in the value of their unique presence. Visit the Piven Alumni page…

Our History of Outreach

Jeremy Piven with Ralph Campagna, Cass Hill,
and Arnett Morris of the Off the Street Club.
Photo by Chris Guillen

The school wing of our organization is well known for its exemplary history of community outreach. For 35 years, the Piven Theatre Workshop has consistently provided extensive aid through its scholarship program, offering training at little or no cost to under-served and economically disadvantaged students. During a school year, the Workshop grants approximately $30,000 worth of scholarships to students. In addition to scholarship aid, the Workshop currently maintains outreach programs with Chicago’s Off the Street Club and the PACE Program of National Louis University. Other past outreach programs have involved the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, Youth Organization Umbrella, the Center for Independent Futures, Urban Gateways and Mothers Against Gangs. At no charge to themselves, students participating in the Workshop’s outreach programs take part in weekly theatre classes. Upon recommendation of the instructors, the students are invited into the Piven Theatre Workshop mainstream program on full scholarship to further develop their talent and, given their interest and ability, to advance into the Workshop’s junior and senior performance ensembles.

“The Pivens and their very talented faculty have helped our kids realize that the real distance that they must traverse is the one to the world inside themselves – that world of endless possibilities. Dr. Martin Luther King admonished us to reach out to each other, but especially to the children of our inner cities.  The Piven Theatre Workshop has done that in a way that I find inspirational and that Dr. King would find honorable.”
— Ralph Campagna, Executive Director, The Off The Street Club of Chicago

Our History of Mentoring

The Piven Theatre Workshop has a long history of training, not only students, but teachers as well. Our faculty is almost entirely composed of former students who have gone out into the community, earned their college degrees, participated in the professional field, and returned to the Workshop to apprentice as teachers and gradually progress to senior faculty. This cyclical nature of the Piven community is something that we cherish as it continues to nourish and renew our organization. We are continually looking for promising students who might be interested in training as teacher apprentices with our senior faculty members. Whether or not our teacher apprentices choose to pursue teaching later in life, we feel that this opportunity offers an enriching and stimulating experience for a young person, furthers their study in improvisation and the theatre arts, encourages them in their artistic pursuits, and offers them a valuable chance to give back and positively impact the younger generation of students at the Workshop.

Dedicated to nurturing young artists & new works, the Performance Lab of Piven Theatre was created out of the training center to provide performance mentorship opportunities to emerging theatre artists. Through this spirit of collaboration, The Performance Lab of Piven Theatre produced a full week of works from the 365 PROJECT by Pulitzer Prize winner Suzan-Lori Parks, as well as two youth story theatre festivals presented by our Performance Project and Young People's Company. 

The Theatre Wing

The Piven Theatre has been producing highly acclaimed productions throughout its history and has evolved into an Equity house offering a full subscription season. Since launching its subscription season, Piven Theatre has received five Recommendations for Joseph Jefferson Awards, an After Dark Award for Outstanding Ensemble, a Joseph Jefferson Award for Best New Adaptation and a nomination for Best Original Score. Not only does the theatre support a Resident Ensemble of actors, it has also proven valuable as a training ground for young directors such as Eric Simonson, Jennifer Green, Robin Chaplik and Jessica Thebus and award-winning playwrights such as Sarah Ruhl, Jennifer Barclay and Michael Stock. In a full season, the Piven Theatre serves approximately 3,000 audience members from throughout the Chicago metropolitan area.

Our Foundation of Support

The Workshop has recently received generous funding from the National Endowment for the Arts , the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency , the Gaylord & Dorothy Donnelley Foundation , the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation , the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts , the Theatre Communications Group , the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation , the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation , the Arie & Ida Crown Memorial , the Nielsen Family Foundation, Joseph and Jeanne Sullivan, and numerous individual, corporate and foundation contributors.

 “I have been acquainted with the Piven Theatre Workshop for many years and admire their fine work. I have enjoyed a number of their performances and continue to be impressed with the high quality of their productions. I would like to commend Piven Theatre Workshop for its encouragement of acting by people of diverse backgrounds and of all ages.  I am also impressed with their emphasis on performing for many different audiences at reasonable rates, and in some cases for no charge, thus enabling lower-income persons to enjoy this enriching experience of quality theatre.”
— Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky

By focusing on the creative process rather than the pre-patterned result, on releasing the natural sense of play, and on the richest personal expression evoked through the communal experience that is theatre, the Piven Theatre Workshop training program has touched countless lives over the years and continues to seek out new challenges, to strive for further diversification, and to positively impact the Chicago theatre community of which it has been an active and contributing member for 35 years.