Piven Theatre Workshop

The Piven Theatre Workshop is located in Evanston, Illinois and was founded by Joyce and Byrne Piven. For over 30 years, it has existed both as a professional theatre company and a training center for children and adults. Famous alumni to come out of the program include Jeremy Piven, John Cusack, Joan Cusack, Ann Cusack, Aidan Quinn, Laurel Holloman, Lili Taylor, and Kate Walsh.

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Theatre Workshop

Theatre Workshop is a theatre group noted primarily for its long-serving director, Joan Littlewood. Many actors of the 1950s and 1960s received their training and first exposure with the company, many of its productions were transferred to theatres in the West End, and some, such as Oh, What a Lovely War! and A Taste of Honey, were made into films.

Formation

Joan Littlewood and Ewan MacColl met and married in 1934, while both were working with the Theatre of Action. They started their own collaboration developing radio plays for the BBC, taking scripts and cast from local workers. However, both MI5 and the Special Branch maintained a watch on the couple because of their support for the Communist Party of Great Britain. Littlewood was precluded from working for the BBC as a children's programme presenter and some of MacColl's work was banned from broadcast.

In the late 1930s Littlewood and MacColl formed an acting troupe called the Theatre Union. This was dissolved in 1940, but in 1945 many of its former members joined Joan Littlewood's new venture, the Theatre Workshop. In 1948 the company toured Czechoslovakia and Sweden.