The most advanced program Piven offers to our youth performers in 9th–12th grades, Young People’s Company has a long history of seeing outstanding performers and artists emerge from its folds. After an intensive training and rehearsal process, YPC’s annual week-long festival of world premiere story theatre adaptations explores myths, folk tales, fairytales, and modern short stories and is consistently among the highlights of our theatrical season.

Young People’s Company members typically study with Piven for several years before being invited to join this elite ensemble. Company members are adept in all of the skills that Piven trains actors to value: they are dynamic, surprising performers who are sensitive to the emotional needs of the stories they share with our audiences. Company members are sophisticated communicators who confidently share their voices and take bold risks while simultaneously honoring the voices of their fellow ensemble members.

Many Young People’s Company members go on to pursue studies and careers in the arts, often coming back to the Workshop as teachers to share their passion with the next generation of theatre makers. All YPC alumni are valued members of the Piven family, who take into the community lives enriched by the Workshop’s emphasis on the deepest personal expression through focus on the communal experience that is theatre.

The Stories

 Alice In Wonderland

Director: Kara Kowalski

Assistant Director: Frankie Sobel

You Win Some

Director: Jennifer Green

Assistant Director:  Zosia Novak

Theseus and the Minotaur

Director: Livvie Avrick

Rumplestiltskin

Director: Morven Higgins

The Piven Theatre Workshop strives, with both children and adults, to invigorate their students’ natural sense of playthrough the creative process of theatre. A wide array of games and techniques are employed that open the imagination, encourage players to act on impulse, and focus students’ attention away from themselves and onto their fellow actors, thereby counteracting that self-criticism that is so self-defeating.

In this way, a community is established and an ensemble built. Students are encouraged to take risks and liberate their own individual voices while acquiring the skills to communicate truthfully and whole-heartedly on stage or screen.

A nationally respected training center for over 50 years, Piven Theatre Workshop has been honored with numerous awards and has produced a panoply of celebrated theatre artists such as John  Cusack, Joan Cusack, Jeremy Piven, Shira Piven, Aidan Quinn, Kate Walsh, Lili Taylor and many more.