Review: Diana Varco’s "RISE" Confronts Childhood Rage at Hollywood Fringe

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at The Actors Company during 2026 Hollywood Fringe Festival

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Anyone who thinks the journey to explore your own mental health and the reasons why Fear and Confusion play such important roles during our entire lives, has never tried to delve into the originating childhood rage from which all our harmful human emotions originate. For as often as you want to access that rage, the emotions which hold it in place so they can exist, namely Truth, Rage and Shame, do their best to protect what’s going on in the deepest recesses of your mind when their very existence is being threatened with exposure.

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Such is the case for Diana Varco (pictured) during her tour-de-force solo show Rise at this year’s Hollywood Fringe Festival in which she shares her own personal Mental Health journey through all the emotions attempting to silence her journey to accept the childhood Rage holding her back in life, merely so those emotions can continue to exist and run her life.

Her journey unfolds to examine what happens when Truth, Rage, and Shame meet upon a metaphorical moon where each is hidden in an imaginary crater to which Varco, as the displaced narrator, must journey to discover their roles in keeping childhood trauma in place, blocking her ability to move on in life.

All photos courtesy of the Hollywood Fringe Festival site

Written and performed by Varco, her darkly comedic and existentially explosive tour-de-force solo play Rise is told through 20 characters, each assisting her in exploring artistic risks and rewards, the roots of addiction, power of Denial, and rising to one’s Purpose in spite of it all.

In this ground-breaking next work, we are invited to experience an unapologetic, vulnerable and charged peak into a rarely talked about experience – foster care – from which childhood Rage exists.

Written in rhyme, Varco calls the viewer to dive deep into the very concept of Rage to find hope in moments that hurt us the most, leading to resilience in the smallest parts of ourselves as we learn to release all the negative emotions holding childhood rage in place in our minds. And what makes it so difficult is how Denial of its existence keeps the cycle in place throughout our lives. And each of us knows who deadly it can be when that misguided Rage explodes in the least likely of places or situations.

It’s not an easy journey to reach the point of self-awareness Varco shares, especially since it’s easier to just turn away or even fall asleep when attempting to confront such deep-seated, emotional survival blocks. But through movement and truthful demonstrations of what it takes to get to the bottom of the Rage and Shame that keeps Truth from being accessed during mental health treatment, Varco lets us see into how the key to our emotional and mental maturity rests through the door into the most innermost spaces within our minds, even though we resist the belief that place even exists.

It's a very confrontational hour long play at this year’s Hollywood Fringe Festival, but also life-affirming to know none of us are alone in the struggle for emotional maturity rather than turn to the easy crutches of overeating, alcohol abuse, drug use or unbridled sex to forget about where the Rage holding our emotions in place is rooted. And it’s even scarier to confront when you are not prepared to accept its existence is rooted in Truth.

Performed in a black box space at the Actors Company, directed by Meridith Grundei and produced by Jessica Lynn Johnson , Varco is dressed in black with her hair pulled back to create attention to her shining face with emotion-grabbing lighting design as her Mental Health journey takes place. Varco uses just a chair to convey the different settings she goes through while meeting with people from her past and current life to gain a better understanding of what’s blocking her artistic and personal success.

Content warning: Rise contains discussion of potentially distressful themes including but not limited to child abuse, alcohol use, religion, sexual assault, and strong language. Learn more about Diana Varco and her play at dianavarco.com/rise---solo-play.html

Hollywood Fringe Festival page: https://www.hollywoodfringe.org/projects/14443

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_Originally reported by [BroadwayWorld](https://www.broadwayworld.com/los-angeles/article/Review-Diana-Varco-Shares-Her-Journey-to-RISE-Above-Childhood-Rage-20260616)._