Alice Gerstenberg (1885–1972)

Alice Gerstenberg was born to a prosperous family in Chicago, Illinois, the only child of Julia and Erich Gerstenberg. She was able to travel often and attend the theater. She went to the private Kirkland School in Chicago and graduated from Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania in 1907. After college, she spent some time in New York City, where she watching rehearsals of David Belasco's productions before returning home to Chicago. Gerstenberg became a playwright and was noted for her revolutionary use of the split subject (two lines of action) to explore psychological issues, a technique that Eugene O'Neill and others would later employ.

Her plays included Overtones (1915), Alice in Wonderland (an adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s novel), Dress Rehearsal, and Days Without End. Her many one-act plays are frequently included in anthologies and produced in the USA, UK, and Australia. Gerstenberg was highly involved with the Little Theatre movement, a wave of theatre artists who provided intimate spaces where playwrights could experiment freely without commercial pressures.
Following her rising popularity, she founded the Junior League Children's Theater and the Playwrights Theater of Chicago. Later, the Alice Gerstenberg Theatre and its Workshop became a mainstay of Chicago's experimental theater scene.