GERSTENBERG, ALICE

(1885-1972)

The author of the widely produced one-actOvertones(1915) was born in Chicago and attended Bryn Mawr College. She began writing novels in 1908, but turned to playwriting when her first full-length play,Alice in Wonderland(1915), was produced at New York'sBooth's Theatre. That same year,Washington Square Playersproduced herOvertones, which tapped into the craze for Freudian psychology by showing the subconscious alter egos of the two female characters. Returning to Chicago, Gerstenberg was a charter member of the Chicago Little Theatre and continued writing one-acts that experimented with dramatic form.