Plays of Impasse

This work probes the structure and significance of the increasingly numerous and highly visible plays set in contemporary society's dead ends the hospitals, insane asylums, prisons, and military training camps so aptly described by Erving Goffman as total institutions." Carol Rosen shows how the setting in these plays tends to engulf and then to exclude the audience, turning an encompassing stage structure a closed, controlling, absolute system into a protagonist that overwhelms the characters. Originally published in 1983. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.