Byrne Piven

Byrne Piven, born Bernard Piven on September 24, 1929, in Scranton, Pennsylvania, was an American actor, director, and theater educator whose career spanned Broadway, regional theater, television, and arts education. The son of Ukrainian-Jewish immigrants Katie and Samuel Piven, he died on February 18, 2002, in Evanston, Illinois, following a battle with lung cancer.

Piven arrived in Chicago in 1954, where he enrolled at the University of Chicago and met Joyce Hiller, whom he married shortly thereafter. Together with Paul Sills and David Shepard, the Pivens became founding members of the Playwrights Theatre Club, an ensemble that served as a forerunner to The Second City and counted Mike Nichols, Elaine May, Ed Asner, and Barbara Harris among its early participants. In the mid-1950s, the couple relocated to New York, where they studied under Uta Hagen. During this period, Piven performed in multiple New York Shakespeare Festival productions and was part of the Obie Award-winning cast of A House Remembered.

His Broadway career ran from 1956 to 1963 and included appearances in The Infernal Machine, The Good Woman of Setzuan, and Camelot. In the national tour of Camelot, he served as standby for Louis Hayward in the role of King Arthur and for Christopher Carey in the role of Mordred, in a production that also featured Arthur Treacher as Pellinore and Kathryn Grayson as Guenevere.

The Pivens returned to Chicago in 1967, joining Paul Sills, Sheldon Patinkin, Bernie Sahlins, and Joyce Sloane in forming Second City Repertory and subsequently Story Theatre. In 1972, Byrne and Joyce founded the Piven Theatre Workshop, motivated in part by financial necessity and in part by a desire to provide their children with an after-school creative outlet. Both children went on to careers in the performing arts: son Jeremy Piven became an actor, and daughter Shira Piven became a director in film, television, and theater. Piven also taught acting at Northwestern University, where he incorporated improvisation techniques alongside a philosophical approach that drew on both Zen and Jewish traditions.

Among his most celebrated stage roles was his performance in The Man in 605, for which he received the Joseph Jefferson Award for best actor. Other notable productions included The Shoemakers, directed by Shira Piven; The Value of Names at Victory Garden's alongside Shelley Berman; The Sunshine Boys at the National Jewish Theatre; and Bob Falls' production of Hamlet, which starred his then-student Aidan Quinn. He also took on the title roles in King Lear and in a futuristic Workshop production of Macbeth, in which his wife Joyce appeared opposite him as Lady Macbeth.

Beyond the stage, Piven appeared in television series including Miami Vice, Magnum P.I., and Frasier, and was recognizable to general audiences as the riverboat captain in Uncle Ben's rice commercials during the 1970s. His brother was criminologist Herman Piven, who was for a time married to scholar Frances Fox Piven.