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Bernie Beck

Teaches at Piven Theatre Workshop

Bernie Beck has been leading theater games classes at the Piven Theatre Workshop for more than thirty years. He was among the first members of the original Workshop on Davis Street in Evanston, and he has studied, taught and performed with the Workshop ever since. He began studying theater games more than forty years ago, when he moved to Chicago to become a sociologist at Northwestern University. He was introduced to the games by Paul Sills the pioneer of the form, and he has also studied with Paul’s mother, Viola Spolin, who adapted games to theatrical work, as well as Sheldon Patinkin, and Barbara Harris. He has appeared on stage in Chicago for four decades. He was a member of the first Story Theater ensemble, led by Paul Sills, and he first worked with Joyce and Byrne Piven in that group. He performed in all the early productions of the Workshop, in which Story Theater was developed as a medium for presenting great literature in addition to the folk tales that were the earliest sources. He has also been active in Chicago area theatrical ventures focused on Jewish themes, including many shows at the National Jewish Theater and the Chicago Jewish Theater, and he was a member of the Yiddish Arts Ensemble, which presented adaptations of Jewish stories in collaboration with the Maxwell Street Klezmer Band. He was well known to Chicago area Jewish children as Herschel in the Ensemble’s production of Herschel and the Hanukkah Goblins. He has also appeared in many shows on some of Chicago’s leading stages, including the Organic Theater, Victory Gardens Theater, Wisdom Bridge Theater, St. Nicholas Theater, and Drury Lane. He is particularly pleased with his role as Al Capone’s lawyer on several episodes of the television series, The Untouchables, shot in Chicago. Although he is retired now from Northwestern, he continues to be active in sociological and popular cultural issues as a film and television writer for the journal Multicultural Perspectives and as a frequently quoted source for local journalists.

Classes taught by Bernie Beck

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