Belly Up is the story of a blind man, Aaron (playwright Robert Chafe), who has not left his home in many years. His apartment is dominated by a large “mirror”: a rear projected video screen displaying a mirrored view of the room including Aaron, and the fourth wall. The play is presented by Artistic Fraud of Newfoundland, an innovative company from St. John’s who are committed to exploring a staging technique they dub “Kaleidography,” which involves scoring various performance elements – movement, text, etc. – to music. Belly Up Up, they push the envelope further by scoring for the actor nearly every technical element of his performance with the pre-recorded, impeccably produced video projection playing on the mirror/screen upstage. What everyone in the sold out crowd at the world premiere at Theatre La Chapelle last week wanted to know was, “Will it work?”
Well, yes and no. Chafe, for his part, does succeed in mimicking his own “reflection” remarkably well, with rarely more than a half-second difference. Even when the timing is slightly off, it creates a sort of body-echo that is just as interesting. Besides that, Chafe avoids all the usual clich
