When Byrne Piven graduated from college with ambitions of a theater career, he headed straight for New York City. He auditioned for plays and won roles off-Broadway. He loved acting. He loved theater.

But something wasn’t right.

“I decided I hated show business after one year in New York,” Piven said. “I hated the business of trying to get a job.”

He loved performing on stage, but loathed the hassles actors had to deal with behind the scenes.

So Piven moved to Chicago and launched what would become a long-ranging career. He has shunned show business, pursued pure theater and taught many actors, young and old, the thrills of the craft.

The Piven Theatre Workshop — which Piven, 71, runs with his wife, Joyce — honored his 50 years in theater Jan. 15. The theater directors held a benefit for the workshop at the Mercury Theatre in Chicago.

But the actor, who’s trained for the stage and screen, dismissed the fuss over his anniversary in theater.

“It’s a nervous thing, being fated,” he said of the celebration.

Evanston Mayor Lorraine Morton, who attended the event and is a friend of the Pivens, said she enjoyed the video retrospective of Byrne Piven’s work that was shown.

“It was absolutely amazing to see the various types of roles he’s played over 50 years,” Morton said.

For the last 30 years Piven has focused on his workshop, which he started in 1970 after a brief stint teaching theater at Northwestern. Piven said he left because he disagreed with the department’s treatment of students, who wanted more control over productions.

He and Joyce began teaching theater classes at the Evanston Art Center. Soon they relocated to a space on Davis Street, and later they moved the workshop to the Noyes Cultural Arts Center, 927 Noyes St.

The workshop grew steadily, with more classes and instructors added with increasing demand.

“It has grown over 30 years from two classes to over 20 classes,” Piven said. All of the instructors trained with the Pivens.

Prof. Bernard Beck, who joined the workshop faculty early on, said the workshop’s classes drew in local youth and competed with those of Evanston Township High School.

“For a while it became a major rival of ETHS’s program,” said Beck, who is a sociology professor at NU. “The two great shows were the Piven show and the Yamo at ETHS. There were all kinds of amusing conflicts of who’s going to which show.”

Over the years, the workshop developed a reputation in theater circles.

“The North Shore of Chicago has become a mecca of young people’s theatre,” Beck said.

The workshop boasts many famous alumni, including John Cusack, Joan Cusack, Lili Taylor and Aidan Quinn.

The Pivens’ own children, Jeremy and Shira, also grew up at the workshop.

Beck attributed much of the Piven children’s success in their careers — Jeremy acts in films and Shira directs in theater — to their parents’ instruction.

“The training and understanding of theater they learned from their parents is absolutely crucial in the way they work,” Beck said.

He pointed to the Pivens’ grasp of theater as the reason for the workshop’s success.

“Byrne is one of the very best acting coaches I’ve come across,” Beck said. “He is a brilliant director. He is a great conceptualist. He has a big personality.”

Joyce Piven also played a key role, founding the Young People’s Company to teach children as young as 9. She continues to direct some of the productions as well.

“They are a team,” Morton said. “She isn’t as noisy, but just as powerful.”

Since he and his wife founded the workshop, Byrne Piven also has dabbled in other theater productions and screen work.

He won a Jeff, the Chicago equivalent of the Tony Award, for his performance in the Piven production “The Man in 605” in 1980. Last year, Piven won the Jeff Lifetime Achievement Award.

He appeared in “Shadow of the Blair Witch” last year, and played a small role in 1999’s “Being John Malkovich.” On television, he portrayed Dr. Sigmund Freud in an episode of “Frasier.”

Both of the Pivens will be active in the theater’s productions in the coming months.

Joyce Piven will direct Anton Chekhov’s “Three Sisters,” which runs Feb. 8 through March 18.

Byrne Piven will star in Shakespeare’s “King Lear” May 31 through July 8. His daughter, Shira, will direct the play.

The theater at the Noyes center reflects many of Byrne Piven’s conceptions of a performance atmosphere.

“His philosophy: It’s making a virtue out of necessity,” Beck said.

Fewer than 100 seats surround a central space in the theater, which formerly was a kindergarten classroom.

“It really is a matchbox operation,” Beck said. “It’s real theater. It’s very intimate. The slightest thing goes wrong, and it’s right there under the microscope. But that’s what makes it fun.”

Throughout most of the workshop’s existence, the Pivens and the faculty spontaneously worked on projects.

“It developed into a kind of company without it even being called so,” Beck said. “We would put on shows when we were ready. And shows we wanted to do.

“It didn’t really get into a groove because it was always reinventing itself.”

The workshop relies on theater methods the Pivens developed in the years before they came to Evanston.

When he first moved here from New York, Piven met Joyce at the University of Chicago. In the next few years, the two worked with Paul Sills, Ed Asner, Mike Nichols and Elaine May, among others. The group developed more fluid, natural acting methods than Byrne Piven had learned at college.

“The theater games, they form a keystone, a foundation of what we do — our method,” Piven said.

In 1954 some of the group disbanded with hopes of higher success.

“Many of us went to New York to be real actors, not realizing how real we had been,” Piven said.

He and Joyce spent 13 years in New York, acting in plays and teaching classes. Eventually they returned to Chicago to seek out their roots.

Through the years, though, he mostly relied on commercial voice-overs for financial support while he and Joyce ran the workshop.

“My selling out was doing commercials,” Piven said. “But they’ve been the patrons of the workshop. They put my kids through school.”

He said he is proud of the theater’s famous alumni, who can afford to choose projects.

“When you reach Johnny Cusack’s stage in show business, you’ve got some choices, you can maintain some integrity,” Piven said. “Which is one thing in short supply in the theater.”

Even though neither of the Pivens sought high-profile careers onstage or on screen — preferring to teach just beneath the surface — they have had a large impact on theater, Beck said.

“They’re both brilliant actors. And that’s something that’s known to a lot of people inside,” he said. “They aren’t stars, but the stars all know them.”

Piven said he and Joyce have toyed with the idea of moving the workshop to its own building someday, but face new problems.

“We’re probably too old now,” he said. “That’s another hassle.”

Piven’s career longevity, 50 years and counting, often is unmatched in theater.

Again Piven shrugged.

“I’m astonished to have survived myself all this time,” he said.