author
Alice Gerstenberg
1885–1972
A sharp, inventive voice in early 20th-century American theater, she wrote witty, psychologically layered plays and helped shape Chicago’s Little Theatre movement. Her best-known work, Overtones, is still remembered for its bold, experimental structure.
2 Audiobooks
Alice in Wonderland A Dramatization of Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass"
by Alice Gerstenberg, Lewis Carroll
Washington Square Plays
by Lewis Beach, Alice Gerstenberg, Edward Goodman, Philip Moeller
About the author
Born in Chicago on August 2, 1885, she became an American playwright, actress, and activist closely associated with the city’s Little Theatre movement. She studied at the Kirkland School and Bryn Mawr College, and her work grew out of a lively Chicago cultural scene that valued new, more intimate kinds of theater.
She is best known for experimental and feminist-leaning drama, especially the one-act play Overtones (1915), which used an unusual split between social speech and inner thought. Along with writing plays, she was active in performance and in theater circles that supported new dramatic forms outside mainstream commercial productions.
Her papers, preserved by the Newberry Library, reflect a long life in Chicago’s artistic and social world. She died in Chicago on July 28, 1972, leaving behind a body of work that helped make space for more adventurous voices on the American stage.