Queer Places:
Bryn Mawr College (Seven Sisters), 101 N Merion Ave, Bryn Mawr, PA 19010
Rosehill Cemetery, 5800 N Ravenswood Ave, Chicago, IL 60660, United States

Alice Erya Gerstenberg (August 2, 1885 – July 28, 1972) was born on August 2, 1885, in Chicago, Illinois, as the only child of Julia Wieschendorff Gerstenberg and Erich Gerstenberg, a successful grain merchant whose father had helped found the Chicago Board of Trade in 1848. Growing up with a higher standard of living than most middle-class families of the era, she enjoyed ample travel and cultural indulgences, including commercial theater. She attended a private school in Chicago before graduating from Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania in 1907. Following college, she spent time in New York observing David Belasco's rehearsals and studying at Anna Morgan's studio in 1908 before returning permanently to Chicago.

Back in Chicago, Gerstenberg committed herself to writing, regional activism, and the burgeoning Little Theater Movement. Her literary career began with her first full-length play, The Conscience of Sarah Platt, followed by her 1912 novel Unquenched Fire and her comedy Captain Jack, performed that same year by the American Academy of Dramatic Arts students in New York. In 1915, she wrote an adaptation of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland that gained widespread popularity among children's theater groups. Her greatest theatrical achievement came with the publication and production of Overtones, a groundbreaking one-act play premiered in November 1915 by the Washington Square Players at the Bandbox Theater in New York. The play gained lasting acclaim for its innovative use of the split-subject technique—representing characters' conscious and subconscious selves simultaneously—anticipating stylistic devices later used by Eugene O'Neill.

Gerstenberg's artistic life was deeply intertwined with Chicago's vibrant cultural circles. She was an active participant in The Little Room, a prestigious mixed-gender social club that met on Friday afternoons in the Fine Arts Building. This progressive network included notable creative figures like Jane Addams, Harriet Monroe, Lorado Taft, and Floyd Dell. Many prominent women in this circle, including Gerstenberg, lived independent lives outside traditional heteronormative marriage, often forming lifelong domestic partnerships or remaining unmarried.

Rather than relocating to New York like many of her Midwestern peers such as Zoe Akins and Susan Glaspell, Gerstenberg chose to stay in Chicago to champion regional art and non-commercial theater. Her dedication led her to found the Junior League Children's Theater in 1921 and the Playwrights Theater in 1922. She later supported an amateur theater company that was named in her honor in 1955. Alongside her theatrical endeavors, she collaborated with Herma Naomi Clark on historical dramas like When Chicago Was Young and the suffrage-themed manuscript Shall Women Vote? Her contributions earned her widespread recognition, including speaking roles at the National Drama Council and the National Theatre Conference, invitations to American Educational Theatre Association conferences, and the Chicago Foundation for Literature Award in 1938. Gerstenberg continued writing, acting, and advocating for the arts throughout her life, passing away on July 28, 1972, at the age of 86, and was laid to rest at Rosehill Cemetery in Chicago.

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