The set of Two By Pinter currently running at the Piven Theatre Workshop. Photo by Jamie Wiebe / North by Northwestern.

Joyce Piven leans toward me, looks me straight in the eye, and says in a raspy-but-loud voice, “Full… body… whisper.”

She pauses, sits back in her chair and says, “Slow motion.” The words roll sluggishly out of her mouth.

She straightens and raises her eyebrows. “Or double time,” she chatters quickly. “When you’re going fast, it shakes things up, keeps you out of your head and in play.”

“And play,” she pauses for emphasis, “is everything.”

As co-founder and art director emeritus of Piven Theatre Workshop, Joyce has plenty to say about “play,” or the state of being present and alive in the text. That’s why the actors at Piven Theatre Workshop play games like “full body whisper” — changing the tone and rhythm of lines to keep the audience and other actors engaged in a communal experience. After all, Piven Theatre Workshop, just two blocks away from campus, is nationally renowned not just for the abundance of talent that has emerged from under its wing, but its ensemble work and extensive community outreach.

Joyce and her husband Byrne Piven (who passed away in 2002) were both founding members of Playwright’s Theatre Club, which also spawned the Compass Players and Second City. In 1971, the Pivens founded Piven Theatre Workshop in Evanston to cultivate talent in a positive environment for all aspects of theater. Along with their children, Shira and Jeremy (better known to most Northwesterners as Ari Gold in HBO’s Entourage), they were designated “Chicago’s first family of acting” by Stagebill magazine. The workshop is lauded as one of Chicago’s most successful theater training grounds, and has seen the likes of Kate Walsh, Lara Flynn Boyle, Joan and John Cusack, Jeff Garlin, and countless other directors, playwrights and producers. Piven alum Sarah Ruhl, who is returning for the Chicago premiere of her play Late: A Cowboy Song, won the MacArthur Fellowship in 2006. Chicago has a vibrant theatre scene, and Piven has been feeding it for almost 40 years.

“More Northwestern students should know that just two blocks away is one of the major cultural institutions of the Chicago area,” Artistic Director Jen Green says. “It’s a classic Chicago black-box experience in your own backyard.”

Currently playing at Piven Theatre Workshop are two short plays by Novel Prize-winning playwright Harold Pinter. Joyce is directing Two by Pinter and chose Pinter’s “The Lover” and “The Collection” in order to explore the intricacies of human intimacy and sensuality.

“Intimacy is a fearful thing, in that we will do anything we can do to run away from it, even though it’s our basic need,” Joyce says.

Throughout the plays, Joyce and the actors carefully fill Pinter’s signature pauses with the tension and emotion that underlie the silence. “When we find the subtext of the encounter, we see that stakes are high, and one’s idea of oneself is being threatened,” Joyce says. “One is fighting for one’s point of view in a very personal, private way.”

Pinter’s work is known for its minimalism, and Joyce wants to stay true to that. She’s fiercely loyal to the text. “Most actors think they have to bring something to [the text], but I feel the opposite,” she says. “You have to hang in with the playwright — he knows what he wrote. The words tell you everything.”

Joyce brings her theatrical visions to life by being both a generous actor and mentor, according to Jessie Mills, an assistant director for Two by Pinter and former Northwestern graduate student. Mills grew up in Evanston and trained at Piven Theatre Workshop as a teenager. After working at theatres throughout New York, Mills returned to Piven.

“Once you get a taste of what it’s like to be in community theater, you don’t want to let it go,” Mills says. “A lot of people who train here and go elsewhere get disheartened by the individualistic sentiment at other theaters.”

“Piven’s incredible as a training ground,” she says. “It’s a group of students who are slowly becoming artists, working together and collaborating… it allows you to address theater in a different light.”

Piven Theatre Workshop further realizes its theme of community by giving back to the surrounding neighborhood. Besides training about 1,000 students a year (ages 9 and up), the theater has a scholarship program, the Piven Empowerment through Enrichment Program, and classes for adults with disabilities. Piven also partners with various outreach programs in the city to share its passion for creativity.

“It comes from a deep philosophic belief that art unifies and creates,” Joyce says. “It’s not just for the privileged few. Community is a magic source of positive things — we are always aiming for that communal energy.”

The directors, teachers, producers and actors at Piven take on additional responsibilities to serve as teaching artists for students, interns and assistants. Piven doesn’t hire freelance artists — it is a self-sustaining program with teachers and students that continue the mentoring cycle and keep alums coming back. As a nonprofit organization, Piven also offers internships for graphic design, box office and marketing.

Joyce claims that the secret to Piven Theatre Workshop’s success is that they don’t set out to train artists. When artists are in touch with their talent and in the company of other supportive, like-minded artists, their talent grows parallel to the sense of camaraderie. “What the world doesn’t need is another unemployed actor,” Joyce says. “We need a community of artists.”

The perfect example of Piven Theatre Workshop’s ability to grow artists is Joyce’s son, Jeremy Piven. As a child, Joyce says, Jeremy was not so interested in theater — he instead wanted to play football. “He was not tall enough or big enough, thank goodness,” she says. “We always had to negotiate him coming to perform and be in class here.”

So the Pivens allowed Jeremy to play football in the fall, so long as he rehearsed and performed in their famed Young People’s Company in the winter and spring. The other kids asked, “How come Jeremy gets to do other things in the fall?” and Joyce’s answer was always, “Because he’s my son.”

What she didn’t tell them was, “Because he’s very good.” Joyce smiles as she recounts the way he could walk into a room and immediately own it, even as a child – he was a natural. After many years immersed in workshop productions and the supportive atmosphere of his parents’ theater, Piven emerged as a true artist. Football was a dream deferred for all the right reasons.

Joyce Piven. Photo courtesy of Piven Theatre Workshop.

At Jeremy’s first play in college, Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, he played Mark Antony. When it came time to deliver Antony’s famous speech, instead of entering through the wings, Jeremy kicked in the door at the back of the auditorium, stormed down the aisle and bounded onto the stage.

“My husband and I turned to each other, and we said, I think we have another actor in the family.”

Joyce Piven is always in play. Whether she’s analyzing theater text and bringing it to life, mentoring bright young minds or whispering three words very loudly, Joyce is continuously engaging with the world. And luckily, she wants to engage with us too.

“Because our emphasis artistically is community, we would love it if Northwestern shared that aesthetic,” she says. “All students, theater and non-theater, can come and extend their passion beyond the wonderful training they’re getting at school. Come, exercise in theater and play.”