Shira Piven

Piven was raised in Evanston, Illinois, a city outside Chicago.[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.[7][8] She studied drama and music at Bennington College, and graduated in 1983.[9] Piven grew up in a Jewish family[10]

Piven has directed more than 20 plays in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., including Fully Loaded in 2006,[11] actor Patrick McCartney’s one person show Sinister Kid in 2013,[12] and Victims of Duty in 2018.[13][14][15] In 1999, she founded the Water Theater Company in New York,[16][17] and led the improv theater group Burn Manhattan.[18]

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.[19][20][21]

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.[22][23]

Piven has also directed television episodes for Transparent, Claws, Divorce, Sweetbitter, and One Mississippi.[24][25][26]

Piven married writer and director Adam McKay in 1999.[27][28] She and McKay reside in Los Angeles with their daughters Lili Rose and Pearl.[29][30] Her younger brother is actor Jeremy Piven.[31]

Piven has taught theater to prison inmates and gang members.[32][33][34] 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.[35]

As director

• Shira Piven at IMDb