Alice Gerstenberg

Alice Erya Gerstenberg (August 2, 1885 – July 28, 1972) was an American playwright, actress, and activist best known for her experimental, feminist drama and her involvement with the Little Theatre Movement in Chicago.

Early life Gerstenberg was born in Chicago, Illinois, the only child of Julia and Erich Gerstenberg, a successful grain merchant. Gerstenberg's grandfather was a founder and member of the Chicago Board of Trade in 1848, a position Gerstenberg's father inherited later. The Gerstenbergs enjoyed a higher standard of living than most middle-class families in Chicago at the time.

Gerstenberg had ample travel experiences and social indulgences including commercial theater. She attended a private school in Chicago and graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1907. After college, she spent some time in New York watching the rehearsals of David Belasco and taking classes at Anna Morgan's studio in 1908.

Career After living in New York for a period, Gerstenberg returned to Chicago, where she continued to write plays; became involved with the Little Theatre movement, supported her parents, and exercised a strong feminist dedication to bringing non-commercial theater to new playwrights, children, and Chicagoans. At this time, Gerstenberg also wrote Overtones, a one-act play, her second stage play, and her most frequently performed and printed, which was first produced in November 1915 by the Washington Square Players at the Bandbox Theater in New York. Gerstenberg continued to write plays throughout her life, later on publishing several radio plays as well as several commissioned dramatizations of children's stories. In 1921 Gerstenberg published a compilation of plays titled Ten-One Act Plays that includes her popular piece Overtones As well as Four Plays for Four Women published a few years later in 1924.

Regional theater and the Little Theater Movement Gerstenberg played a crucial role in the foundation and success of several theater companies as well as the Little Theater Movement in Chicago. In 1921, she founded the Junior League Children's Theater in Chicago; in 1922 she founded the Playwrights Theater; and she supported an amateur theater company that was eventually named for her at its foundation in 1955. Fourteen (1920) Ten One-Act Plays (1921) The Pot Boiler or The Dress Rehearsal (1923) Four Plays for Women (1924) Mah-Johngg (1924) Their Husband (1924) Ever Young (1924) Seaweed (1924) At the Club (1925) The Land of "Don’t Want To" (1928), dramatization of Lilian Bell's children's story

Overtones (1929), three act edition Comedies All (1930) The Water Babies (1930), dramatization of Charles Kingsley's work Sentience (1933) Glee Plays the Game (1934) Within the Hour (1934) Across the River (1939), radio play Lake Front (1939), radio play Time for Romance (1940) Got Your Number (1942, unpublished) ‘’Victory Belles ‘’ (play) 1944) On the Beam (1963, unpublished) Time for Living (1969) Concordia (Unpublished, n.d.) Port of Chicago (Unpublished, n.d.) The Hourglass (n.d.) Novels Unquenched Fire (1912) The Conscience of Sarah Platt (1915)

Legacy Gerstenberg's play Overtones, her most frequently performed and printed work, was adapted into the chamber opera The Clever Artifice of Harriet and Margaret in 2013 by composer-librettist Leanna Kirchoff. The opera won the National Opera Association's 2014-2016 Chamber Opera Composition Competition, and was given its professional premiere by Really Spicy Opera at the Minnesota Fringe Festival in 2015. The opera was later staged by the National Opera Association and Gateway Opera in 2016.