Wannabe astronauts have to be flown tens of thousands of feet into the atmosphere to achieve the effects of weightlessness.

But Montreal theatre company Y2D have managed to recreate the effect on stage using a simple room set and a camera set at a 90-degree angle.

Originating as performer Tobias Wegner’s contribution to a Berlin cabaret variety show, Leo has grown to become a multi-award-winning hit at both the 2011 Edinburgh Fringe – where it won a prestigious Scotsman Fringe First – and last year’s Adelaide Fringe.

But as Leo pays a one-off visit to The Old Market, creative producer Gregg Parks reveals the show had a long gestation period between 2008 and its 2011 Edinburgh Fringe debut.

“We originally had two three-minute sections in the Berlin show,” says Parks. “The material continued to develop over a year, turning into three five or six-minute sections.”

The opportunity arose to work with Montreal-based director Daniel Briere, but his packed schedule – on the back of a recent hit – meant the company could only work with him on expanding the performance on odd weeks at a time over the course of a year and a half.

“We found a story for the character and a setting,” says Parks.

“All the original funny material was quite straightforward – we needed a theatrical arc to go from the very funny to the much more serious and turn it into a real show. It became clear it needed to cover a lot more ground if it was going to stand up on its own.”

The story – which is wordless but carefully scripted – follows an ordinary man in a simple room who discovers his world has become “physically unhinged”.

After initially playing with his new apparently weightless state and exploring new worlds, he realises he is alone and needs to break out of the room which has become his prison.

Parks is first to admit the research period was intense, with the company exploring the use of furniture, trampolines and even electromagnets to play with the idea of weightlessness.

But they kept coming back to the simplicity of just the character in a room – albeit with occasional video projections.

“The character of Leo is charming, and when the material is light and funny it is wonderful,” says Parks. “When we had that initial 15 or 16 minutes we thought we were close to the outer edge – it couldn’t go much longer as it started to become repetitive.

“The simplicity of the character is the fact he’s a bit like Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton – characters that reach us because they are so human. When the story stops being funny and becomes more serious we are concerned about him.”

From the start, it was important to have both the live action and the 90-degree projection happening side-by-side on stage.

“When you go to a magic show you know it’s not real, but you love the stuff they do,” says Parks. “It’s about suspension of disbelief.

“We couldn’t have done this without the audience seeing him live alongside the screen.

“Gene Kelly was once talking about his work as a dancer on film – he said what was funny about dance on film is it could never be that long. What worked in person for eight to ten minutes only worked for two or three minutes on screen.

“This way we get the best of both worlds – it’s like a tennis match with people looking back and forth with what the performer is doing and how it looks on screen.”

The screen was essential for rehearsals too – especially when original performer Wegner passed the work on to new actors.

This tour stars Julian Schulz who also performed at the Brisbane Festival last year.

“Toby was a key part of the original creative team,” says Parks. “He had got pretty comfortable with the orientation. It was always disorientating to watch so the director always had to double-check between the live performance and the screen – monitors for the performer never worked.

“It takes new performers like Julian more than a month to learn the moves, and another six months to get comfortable with it – it’s such a change in physicality. It’s a lot of rehearsal for something that has already been created – but there’s so much detail in the show.

“The focus is all on Julian – he has said he is used to having a director focus on him for a while and then he gets to go into the wings for a bit while someone else takes over. With this there is no one else.

“It’s like running a marathon for a performer – there’s no break or let-up, and no one else to rely on.”