The Embrace… Advance to Fury (performance stills)
Live theater occurrence in Houston, Texas, 1978; and University Theater, University of California, Berkeley, California, 1979

Allen wrote the text for RING in 1976, which tells of a couple, husband and wife, both writers, both alcoholics. Deep in the throes of marital strife, they play out their grievances in a wrestling match – bound (metaphorically and literally) by the confines of the “ring.” He would later elaborate the narrative into a series of discreet tableaux with excerpted texts in The Evening Gorgeous George Died (1976) and a theatrical occurrence The Embrace… Advance to Fury (1978). The performance was translated into a “video melodrama,” which plays from a television set within a miniature wrestling ring in the sculpture The Embrace (1979). Presented alongside, the two-dimensional works belong to the series Fighters of the Darkness (1977), wherein according to Allen, “the text becomes a between-the-lines projection of itself, pulling specific phrases, sentences, words, etc., from the writing and using them to develop specific constructions and works on paper that expand other possibilities for the story.”

In her 1981 essay “RING, A Story Which Swallows Its Own Tale,” Marcia Tucker wrote: “RING uses as a catalyst the paradigmatic relationship between two characters, HE and SHE, who embody in their actions, hopes, fears, responses, denials, quests, and mannerisms of the quintessential man and woman. This archetypal couple are not heroic or mythic figures, but are inhabitants of a very contemporary, all-too-familiar world that we share. As viewers, we participate in a journey through a variety of places, spaces, attitudes, and events in which we see and confront ourselves.”

fighters of the darkness (RING), 1977
mixed media on paper
20 ¼ x 25 ¼ in. (51.4 x 64.1 cm)

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