Alice Erya Gerstenberg (August 2, 1885 – July 28, 1972) was an American playwright, actress, and activist best known for her experimental, feminist drama and her involvement with the Little Theatre Movement in Chicago.

[2] After living in New York for a period, Gerstenberg returned to Chicago, where she continued to write plays; became involved with the Little Theatre movement, supported her parents, and exercised a strong feminist dedication to bringing non-commercial theater to new playwrights, children, and Chicagoans.

[1] It has been anthologized alongside Susan Glaspell’s Trifles as classic examples of modern one-act plays by women involved in the little theater movement.

[2] The majority of these plays demonstrate her feminist tendencies – critiquing the social roles and decision which constrained women of the time.

[2] Gerstenberg's play Overtones, her most frequently performed and printed work, was adapted into the chamber opera The Clever Artifice of Harriet and Margaret in 2013 by composer-librettist Leanna Kirchoff.