Fay Ehlert

Fay Ehlert was an American playwright active in the little-theatre world of the late 1920s. She is best known for The Undercurrent, a one-act play that was published by Samuel French and later preserved by Project Gutenberg, helping keep her work available to new readers.

Contemporary and later theatrical sources connect her with Chicago, and rare-book trade descriptions identify her as a Chicago social worker as well as a writer. That background fits the concerns of The Undercurrent, a tense domestic drama centered on family pressure, control, and the possibility of escape.

Although not a widely documented literary celebrity today, Ehlert remains part of the long history of American one-act drama. Her surviving work offers a glimpse of the serious, socially aware stage writing that flourished outside the biggest commercial theaters in the early 20th century.