Byrne Piven in 2001 just before his last major role, King Lear, directed by his daughter Shira.

A little bit of air went out of the world on February 18. After months of fighting lung cancer, Byrne Piven’s body slowly shut down. He was surrounded by his family, friends and former students. His last words were, "I love you."

Byrne Piven was born in Scranton, Penn., on Sept. 24, 1929. He came to Chicago in 1954 and met Joyce Hiller at the University of Chicago. They were married a short time later. In the 1950s, the Pivens were two of the founding members of the Playwrights Theatre Club, with other notables such as Paul Sills and David Shepard. Playwrights featured such budding stars as Mike Nichols, Elaine May, Ed Asner and Barbara Harris. From Playwrights came the Compass Players and from Compass came Second City.

In the mid-50s, the Pivens moved to New York, where they studied with Uta Hagen. Byrne played the leads in several New York Shakespeare Festival Productions. He was also part of the Obie Award-winning cast of A House Remembered.

They returned to Chicago in 1967 to rejoin Sills, Sheldon Patinkin, Bernie Sahlins and Joyce Sloane in forming Second City Repertory and then Story Theatre. In 1972 they started the Piven Theatre Workshop, partly to supplement their incomes, and partly to have something for their children–Shira and Jeremy (as well as their friends Nancy and Dick Cusack’s children)–to do after school. As Byrne liked to point out with great pride, many of those children went on to fame and fortune. Many also stayed with the Workshop, insuring that the Piven legacy will go on.

Some of Byrne’s favorite roles include The Man in 605, for which he received the Joseph Jefferson Award for best actor, the Piven Theatre Workshop/Famous Door production of The Shoemakers, directed by Shira, Victory Garden’s production of The Value of Names with Shelley Berman, This Old Man Came Rolling Home and The Sunshine Boys at the National Jewish Theatre, Bob Falls’ Hamlet (starring Byrne’s then-student Aidan Quinn) and the Workshop’s futuristic production of Macbeth.

Byrne also starred as the river boat captain in the Uncle Ben’s rice commercials in the 1970s.

Those are just some of the facts. But Byrne Piven was more than facts. He was loud and difficult and loving and passionate, he was connected to himself and the world in a way that other people only aspire to be. At the beginning of the funeral service, the Rabbi quoted from Ecclesiastes: "For everything there is a season…a time to be born and a time to die…a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance."

Later, Aidan Quinn took it one step further, "A time to laugh, a time to cry…you could get that in 30 minutes with Byrne."

Stories abound about his depth of knowledge, his love of storytelling, his deep, barrel-chested voice rumbling encouragement or chastising in a surprisingly tender manner. His niece told a story about learning her lines for her cousin Jeremy’s Bar Mitzvah. Just memorizing them was an accomplishment, she thought, for a 5-year-old. But Byrne then gave her pointers on keeping her head up and speaking clearly that she said she uses to this day.

Harry J. Lennix told of a dinner party in which someone asked him about the Muslim faith. For Byrne, apparently, Lennix’s explanation wasn’t thorough enough, so he interrupted and answered the question in greater detail and with greater knowledge than even some Muslims have. Lennix said he thought, "Malcolm X would like this guy."

Quinn talked about a 19-year-old kid who called Byrne and Joyce and told them he wanted to be an actor. Joyce turned the phone over to Byrne. "Thirty minutes later," Quinn said, "I was still listening." Byrne told the timid kid about James Joyce and the difference between Irish storytellers and Jewish storytellers and why the Bears were better than the Packers. "When I hung up the phone I was uplifted," said Quinn.

Dick Cusack and Byrne Piven in David Mamet's Duck Variations in the 1980's.

Who wouldn’t be? John Cusack told the mourners, "I think Byrne truly believed that art had the power to change the world one person at a time." Art may or may not have that power. But we do know this: Byrne Piven had the power to change the world one person at a time.

"He taught me how to hug," Quinn said. "His Jewish warmth was something I and my brother Paul and my sister Miriam just basked in."

In recent years Byrne was involved with Chicago’s Off the Street Club, dedicated to getting west-side young people off the street and into organized endeavors, like acting. One young man from the program sang at Byrne’s 50th anniversary in show business celebration last year, and at his funeral last week.

Byrne wanted to teach everybody he came in contact with, which could be maddening at times. In the days after the funeral, Joyce told visitors a story about Byrne walking by when she was teaching a game one day and whispering, "You’re doing it wrong." When she got over being annoyed, she realized he was right. She also told about Byrne rolling down the windows of his car and yelling at people he thought were driving wrong. "He just couldn’t stop teaching people," she said with a laugh, even those who wouldn’t listen to him.

His legacy will be all the people he inspired through the Piven Theatre Workshop. He listened closely and pushed people beyond where they thought they could go.

In the hospital last week, Byrne recited Hamlet’s "To be or not to be" soliloquy to Shira. "…to die, to sleep, no more; and by a sleep to say we end the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to."

Byrne Piven learned of his lung cancer in November. He fought his cancer just as he tackled everything else in life: head on and with the most learned resources. But the chemotherapy ravaged his body as much as the cancer did.

His son, Jeremy, said that his father told him a few days before he died, "I cry all the time now, not because I’m afraid of dying, but because I love so many people."

Byrne is survived by his wife, Joyce, his son Jeremy Piven, his daughter Shira Piven (son-in-law Adam McKay), granddaughter Lili Rose McKay, sister Miriam Piven-Cotler and brother Herman Piven. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Piven Theatre Workshop for a production fund in Byrne’s memory or the American Cancer Society.

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11 Questions with Byrne Piven