The ThunderBlogs

The Black Eyed Peas’ I Gotta Feeling blasted Tuesday evening from the speakers in the Walter Gage Towers lounge. Volunteers staffed information tables by the doors and distributed pamphlets about sexual assault. Twenty-eight women and eight men sat in the room and bopped their heads to the music’s rhythm. Meghan Gardiner stood beside a velvet footstool in front of the audience. She prepared to perform her one-woman show on sexual assault, Dissolve.

Lau Mehes, the program assistant for the Sexual Assault Awareness Program, helped organize the performance for the education initiative. She said the play offered the opportunity to reach more people with the information.

Tanya Prinzing sat in the third row beside her friends. Prinzing said she came because she had to attend a women produced event for her women’s studies class. She spotted many of her classmates dispersed throughout the audience.

The music stopped. Gardiner emerged onstage dressed in a simple black tank top and matching pants. She puffed out her chest, squared her shoulders and lowered her voice transforming into a club bouncer. For the next hour she morphed between different characters and delivered the story of one victim’s realization that she was drugged and sexually assaulted. The audience continued to applaud while she ran and grabbed a well-earned bottle of water after the show ended.

Gardiner returned with her face flushed from her performance and answered questions from the audience. She said that the play was based on her personal experience. She intended for it to entertain and be cathartic, but realized that it also educated, she said. “It’s hard because – dare I say it – the people who really need to see this show aren’t here,” Gardiner said.

Most of the blue and grey folding chairs in the room were occupied. The audience was composed of mostly females, a handful of volunteers from various relevant organizations on campus and the mandatory attendance of Prinzing and some of her classmates.

Gardiner had performed the piece for over 450 audiences. At the University of Portland it is mandatory to see the show and students have to write a 10-page paper and pay a $100 fine if they do not participate, she said.

At the University of British Columbia it was not a mandatory event, but the students who participated began an important discussion about sexual assault and walked away asking how to get involved.