Meghan Gardiner performing ‘Dissolve’
Dissolve is a one-woman, seventeen character drama which tells the story of a drug-facilitated rape and its emotional, mental, and physical aftermath by UBC alumnus Meghan Gardiner. It was only performed at UBC last week because the CUS Frosh rape chant exposed a rape culture that has been festering and flourishing underneath UBC’s über liberal and enlightened exterior for a long, long time. Gardiner skillfully inserts the audience into the shoes of the victim – and that’s all the girl is, she is a nameless and therefore universal victim. Gardiner not only educates her audience about the terrifying reality of drugs such as Rohypnol and GHP (the wrong dosage of certain date rape drugs mixed with alcohol can prove fatal) but also fills them with compassion for the victim, and frustration at the helplessness of the situation and the shame the victim encounters everywhere after the rape.
Meghan Gardiner, the creator and lone performer, wishes that she, “would be put out of business”, that the story of a woman being drugged and raped would lose all relevancy in our modern culture, that she wouldn’t be so booked up she would have to not only hire another actress to play the part – but also, to create a filmed version, because she has so many bookings at universities and high schools around North America she can’t manage to perform at all of them. Think about that. Gardiner is hired by hundreds of educational institutions because the acceptance, encouragement, or trivialization of rape has become a major issue on the campus. Rape culture needs to change, the trivialization and normalization of rape is not something that we have to accept.
However, for the production I attended there was a grand total of eleven men in attendance, three of whom were students. Efforts like Dissolve can only be effective in pushing back against rape culture if they are given the appropriate opportunities. The young men who need to see Dissolve are not going to attend an optional performance, if we are serious about changing rape culture the individuals who are guilty of trivializing rape need to be exposed to the cruel, harsh reality of rape and what it does to its victims, with or without their consent.