Here's the concept: A comic does a seven minute set in a room by themselves, wearing noise-canceling headphones. A live video feed of their performance is watched by an audience they can't see or hear.

The guy who invented this experiment is comic Ian Abramson, and he brought it to the Improv on October 3 as part of the Bentzen Ball comedy festival. In an interview that afternoon, he told us what he's learned about stand-up by taking "Seven Minutes in Purgatory" on the road.