author
Fay Ehlert
1886–1973
A playwright drawn to the hidden forces shaping ordinary lives, Fay Ehlert turned her experience of social and domestic struggles into vivid drama. Her best-known work, The Undercurrent, helped bring serious one-act plays back to the stage in the late 1920s.
1 Audiobook
The undercurrent : A one act play
by Fay Ehlert
About the author
Fay Ehlert (1886–1973) was a playwright best known for The Undercurrent, a one-act drama first published by Samuel French in 1928 and revised in 1929. The play follows a young woman whose troubled home life and encounter with the courts reveal the unseen pressures behind her choices.
Ehlert said the play grew from her interest in Morals Court, Domestic Relations Court, and the Psychopathic Laboratory, and from her desire to encourage sympathy rather than judgment. The Undercurrent won the Drama League Cup at the Chicago Little Theatre Tournament in May 1928 and later toured professionally across the United States and Canada.
A contemporary preface described Ehlert as the wife of a Chilean consul and praised her determination to establish the one-act play as serious dramatic literature. Her work remains notable for its compassionate attention to family conflict, social hardship, and the circumstances that can shape a life.