"When is sexual assault ever going to be irrelevant?" she said. "I have to embrace it and just make sure the incident gets acknowledged in schools, even if I can't always be there."

Gardiner worked to create several avenues that spread a message parallel to Dissolve's but didn't always require her to be there. In 2008, Green Thumb Theatre, a Vancouver production company, commissioned Gardiner to write a second play on date rape, Blind Spot. It toured without her for two years.

Last year she released Dissolve: A Documentary On Drug-Facilitated Sexual Assault as a companion piece to help answer some of the main questions surrounding the issue. The film features survivor stories -- including Gardiner's -- and a dramatization of a doctor-victim interaction. "It was just another way of getting the message out," Gardiner said, "and I guess deep down, yes, I do really want people to learn more about consent."

Gardiner's efforts earned her a YWCA Vancouver Women of Distinction award nomination this year. The prestigious annual title honours women who contribute to the community's well-being and future. Now, Gardiner has a new play on the school circuit, Role Call.

"It deals with trying to abolish gender stereotyping in really young kids," she said of the Green Thumb production she penned this year. "Compared with Dissolve, it's just as fun and equally rewarding."

The scope of the problem surrounding drug-facilitated sexual assault underscores Gardiner's continued urgency. In 2009, roughly 2,700 sexual assaults were reported in B.C. out of more than 20,000 across the country, according to Statistics Canada.

But according to the agency's survey on victimization, only about one of every 10 assaults is reported. The true numbers could be much, much higher.

Required viewing

Teenaged students filled the windowless auditorium of the all-girls' Crofton House School on a fall morning in Vancouver. With a few words, a teacher silenced the crowd's chattering and Gardiner walked into the spotlight.

She led her young audience through a college girl's night out, moving back and forth from bedroom to bar scenes, morphing between a flurry of characters. She puffed her chest and squared her shoulders as a bouncer. Her high-pitched laugh echoed in the auditorium as she became a club-goer mocking the drugged guest. Eventually, she awoke as a confused date-rape victim the next morning and began trying to piece the night back together, slowly realizing what had happened.

This past year, every student from Grades 8 through 12 at Crofton was required to watch a live performance of Dissolve. The girls represent an important audience: Canadians are most likely to be victims of sexual assault between the age of 15 and 24 years old, according to Statistics Canada.

The school's drama teacher, Cheryl Causley, usually books the play before graduation, hoping to spark student dialogue. This year she wanted to start that conversation sooner, in the wake of an alleged drugging and gang rape of a 16-year-old girl at a rave in Pitt Meadows, B.C., in the fall of 2010.

"It just felt like we needed to bring [Gardiner] in immediately," Causley said.

Her dark-humoured approach to the sensitive topic is unique. In one scene, she shifts between two girls laughing at the soon-to-be victim's drug-induced behaviour in the club. She trills a falsetto laugh before scooting over and becoming the second girl, giggling in a lower tone.

The Crofton high school students didn't expect to laugh aloud during the performance. But they appreciated it, saying the comedic aspect made it more accessible.

"I think that by using humour and presenting it in a more creative way, she's also taking the taboo away from the subject, and now it is something that we can talk about," graduating student Alisha Adam said.

"What this has done is -- even if we don't see a change today or tomorrow -- it's sort of opened the door for more discussion and thought about these types of issues."

Gardiner finds that young audiences often react emotionally to her performance. Some teens don't consider how intoxication can render consent meaningless until they see the play.

"It's very hard," she said, "to watch somebody realize that they've actually been raped."

On with the show

Gardiner burst through her front door in her winter coat on a chilly February evening. She had just returned from performing in a new musical, the esoterically named [Title of Show].

"I adore theatre," she said. "Let's put it this way, I could do theatre for the rest of my life."

Gardiner's love of theatre and acting -- pushing her to add more diverse roles to her resume -- makes the prospect of leaving Dissolve loom larger every year, despite its continued success. She tries to balance other acting roles with her advocacy art by auditioning as often as five times a week. Her perseverance has landed her non-recurring parts on Smallville, The L Word and Cold Squad.

Her role in Evil Dead: The Musical, a Canadian comedy based on the cult classic film series, let Gardiner adopt a very different onstage persona through 2009. She leapt and ducked across the stage, fending off demonic onslaughts and frolicking to the music. "We're all shooting each other with blood and guts," she said. "It was so far from what I normally do that I had a blast."

Gardiner's recent freelancing led her to parts in three B.C. musicals. Over the next six months, she'll be playing characters as diverse as the plays' titles: Blood Brothers, Gunmetal Blues and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Her enjoyment playing and rehearsing these roles helped her realize a permanent break from Dissolve may be near.

After contemplating selling her script, she is now thinking of ways to keep its message alive while performing the show less frequently. Eventually, she might part ways completely with the play she built so many years ago.

"I'm sure that day, I would sit there and weep," Gardiner said, "maybe tears of joy, I don't know. If that happened it would just mean that the show is living on and the message is living on, and that's really all I could ask for."

[See other Tyee stories that tackle similar themes in our Rights + Justice and Gender + Sexuality categories.]