Shira Piven (born October 8, 1961) is an American director, actress, and producer. She directed the 2014 film Welcome to Me.[1][2]
Early life and education
Piven was raised in Evanston, Illinois, a city just north of Chicago on Lake Michigan.[3][4] Her parents, Joyce Piven and Byrne Piven, founded the Piven Theater Workshop in Evanston.[5][6] Piven performed with the theater company during her adolescence and started teaching and directing theater in her 20s.[6][7] She studied drama and music at Bennington College, and graduated in 1983.[5] Piven grew up in a Jewish family[8]
Career
Piven has directed more than 20 plays in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., including Fully Loaded in 2006,[9] actor Patrick McCartney's one person show Sinister Kid in 2013,[10] and Victims of Duty in 2018.[11][3][12] In 1999, she founded the Water Theater Company in New York,[3][13] and led the improv theater group Burn Manhattan.[14]
Piven directed her first feature film, Fully Loaded in 2011, an adaptation of the stage play she co-wrote and directed, about two single mothers on a night out in Los Angeles.[15][16][6]
In 2014, her second feature, Welcome to Me, was co-produced by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay and stars Kristen Wiig as a woman with borderline personality disorder who wins the lottery and launches her own talk show.[3][7]
Piven married writer and director Adam McKay in 1999.[20][21] She and McKay reside in Los Angeles with their daughters Lili Rose and Pearl.[7][4] Her younger brother is actor Jeremy Piven.[6]
Piven has taught theater to prison inmates and gang members.[3][5][11] Piven and McKay both serve as board members of Jail Guitar Doors USA, a non-profit founded by Wayne Kramer that provides musical instruments to inmates.[22]
