Byrne Piven

Byrne Piven was an American actor and director who co-founded the Playwrights Theatre Club, a forerunner of The Second City. Born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, he came to Chicago in 1954 and was among the founding members of Playwrights, alongside Paul Sills and David Shepard. He moved to New York in the mid-1950s, studied with Uta Hagen, played leads in New York Shakespeare Festival productions and was in the cast of A House Remembered, which won an Obie Award. He returned to Chicago in 1967 to help form Second City Repertory and Story Theatre, and taught improvisation at Northwestern University. In 1972 he helped start the Piven Theatre Workshop. His stage roles included The Man in 605, which earned him a Joseph Jefferson Award for best actor, and Macbeth. He was a standby in a national tour of Camelot and appeared on television in Miami Vice, Magnum PI and Frasier. He died in 2002.