- [Narrator] What happens to a comedian
when you take away their audience?
This is a show where comedians
perform an empty theater
while the audience watches from the rooftop.
(laughter)
So the comedians have no idea
how the audience is reacting.
- Welcome to seven minutes in purgatory!
(applause)
Alright!
Whoa!
Oh boy, this is a really fun time,
this is a show where comedians can't hear the audience.
I am the host, Ian Abramson.
Thank you, thank you.
I'm gonna go down, I'll perform,
and you guys will be watching the feed.
So I will see you guys soon.
(applause)
Alright, this is seven minutes in purgatory.
I'm about to perform to a thousand empty seats.
Meanwhile, my fellow comedians will be watching
from the green room.
- Alright well he's the host so he should probably
be making this look really easy, right?
- Welcome to seven minutes in purgatory!
(exhales)
Um, I really like doing this show
because you see a lot of different types of comedy.
That's one of my favorite parts about this show.
So what I wanted to do was talk to you guys
about a type of comedy that we don't
get to see often enough.
And that is physical comedy.
Physical comedy is highly underrepresented,
and you might get to see some tonight,
so I wanted to make sure that you understood
this physical comedy if you did get to see it tonight.
There are three types of physical comedy,
that's the first thing you need to know.
The three types of physical comedy are
good physical comedy,
metaphysical comedy,
and getting a physical comedy.
That's when the doctor tells you to
turn your head and laugh.
(laughter)
(exhales)
Have you ever just started into silence
hoping that there's laughter on the other side?
I do every single time I host this show, okay.
The three principles of physical comedy
are acrobatics, tension, and pain.
The first thing I want to show you is acrobatics.
Okay.
Acrobatics is important to physical comedy
because you need to show the audience
that you can do something that they cannot.
Let me demonstrate with a cartwheel.
(laughter)
(applause)
As you can see, you wouldn't be able to do that.
So the other way that I want to demonstrate
the acrobatics in physical comedy
is by taking a chair, okay,
and I am going to tip the chair over and land gracefully.
Okay, are you guys ready for it?
Give me a big cheer!
- [Michelle] I am not ready for it.
(applause)
(crashing)
- Oh!
- [Man] Pretty good.
- Okay.
You probably think that wasn't supposed to happen,
but I will fall down on purpose,
that's what this says because hey,
that's physical comedy, gotcha.
Wow, okay.
The next principle of physical comedy is tension.
Tension is very important to physical comedy
because it creates high stakes.
If you don't believe that high stakes
and tension create comedy,
then you didn't see my first marriage.
(laughter)
Hold for laugh.
And great.
(laughter)
- He timed it out.
- The best way to demonstrate tension
in physical comedy is a mousetrap.
What you can do very simply with a mousetrap
is set the mousetrap, and you can see
what this is capable of.
If I go like this, you feel it in your gut, right?
You feel the pain that I would feel
and that's funny, right?
You know what I mean?
Ow, God, okay!
(laughter)
Okay that was also on purpose, I'm not gonna lie.
The mousetrap will hurt me, okay.
The last part of physical comedy is pain.
You witnessed some of that,
but what demonstrates pain better
than the classic, classic prop
- [Michelle] Oh no. - Of the banana peel.
- I hope he just eats it.
- Okay, nothing says pain better than a banana peel.
When you see a banana peel, you know exactly
- I've done it, it hurts like hell.
- You should be falling up to it, falling,
and hitting my butt.
(laughter)
Now, what that does, is you see the pain,
you know that you're not feeling it
and that makes you laugh.
The Germans have a word for this,
that is sharten-farten.
(laughter)
That is the German word for laughing
at someone else's pain.
You may think that's a joke, but physical comedy
is not about jokes, it's about pain.
Now the best way to use all of these things at once
is to combine pain and tension into my favorite prop,
the cream pie.
Now I like to use shaving cream
because it sets a little better
and makes just a better pie here, you see?
So what you wanna do, you get your pie,
and this whole thing tells a story.
You can feel that it will hit me in the face,
that's tension.
And that it'll hurt.
That's pain.
So basically, that's kind of the end of physical comedy.
Ah, God!
God!
(laughter)
(applause)
- It stuck to his face.
- Oh my God.
- Okay, that was not supposed to happen.
If you can see, I will not get pie in my face.
God.
I wish this would have happened to anybody else.
Anyway, thank you, that is my time.
Seven minutes in purgatory.
I'll be back up there in a minute.
(applause)
- Ian!
- There he is.
Yeah boy!
Super, super good.
- [Michelle] Banana and pie.