How to Play: Throwing a Stick

Throwing a Stick
Get a large stick -- a thick dowel rod would work well -- and throw it back and forth with your partner. 

While throwing the stick, tell a word-at-a-time story. Or talk about your day. Or just make noise. Whatever.

Don't hit each other in the face. Don't stop throwing the stick. Do this until just before the boredom sets in.

I've been told* that I have four choices for where to be in my scene: My head, my body, my world, or my partners eyes. Three of those things are awesome. One of them sucks. Guess which is which.**

To that end, my friend Brendon and I came up with this simple warm up game to get us out of our analytical brains and into all those other good things.

Another friend, Kevin, and I throw the stick before a show, as illustrated by my husband, Blade.

Throwing the stick makes us move around with our whole bodies.

It allows us to talk and listen without allowing us to judge, because our normal logic is being short-circuited be needing to throw and catch an unwieldy object.

It requires that we make good eye contact if we're not going to get hit in the face.

Throwing the stick puts us in just a little physical danger -- more than a little, if we're not attentive -- which prepares us to take risks.


*Probably by Jet Eveleth.

**It's the head. The head is the worst option. We all know that, right?