Poison Arms
Poison Arms is a game in which a performer stands with their arms behind their back while another player reaches through from behind and provides the arms. The front performer speaks and acts while the person behind provides all the gestures, creating physical comedy from the disconnect between intention and execution.
Structure
Setup
Two performers stand together. The front performer tucks their arms behind their back or inside their shirt. The back performer stands directly behind and extends their arms through, so the audience sees one body with a mismatched set of arms. The host takes a suggestion for a scenario: a cooking show, a job interview, a first date, a science demonstration.
Progression
The front performer speaks and drives the scene while the back performer provides all hand and arm movements. The front performer must justify whatever the arms do. If the arms suddenly reach up and scratch the speaker's face, the speaker incorporates it: "As I was saying, this particular spice always makes my nose itch."
The comedy builds as the arms become increasingly independent, handling props, making gestures, and creating physical situations the speaker must narrate around. The best moments come when the front performer commits completely to the fiction that the arms are their own.
Variations
A talk show version seats the arms performer behind a desk while the front performer delivers a monologue. A dual version has two poison-arms pairs interacting in a scene together. A musical variation features the arms performer conducting or playing air instruments while the front performer sings.
How to Teach It
Objectives
Poison Arms trains physical awareness, verbal justification, and the fundamental improv skill of making your partner look good. The front performer practices accepting and justifying unexpected offers. The back performer practices reading their partner's energy and providing physical support.
How to Explain It
"You are one person with two brains. Front person, you talk. Back person, you are their arms. Front person, whatever the arms do belongs to you. Justify everything."
Scaffolding
Begin with a simple monologue format before advancing to interactive scenes. Let the arms performer start with minimal movement and gradually increase activity. Introduce props only after both performers are comfortable with the basic format.
Common Pitfalls
The most common error is the front performer fighting the arms by pulling away or commenting on what they are doing as if they are separate. The commitment to the fiction that these are your own arms is essential.
The back performer sometimes becomes too aggressive too quickly, overwhelming the front performer before they can establish a scene. Start gentle and escalate gradually.
How to Perform It
The front performer must maintain eye contact with the audience or scene partner and never look at the arms. Looking down breaks the illusion. The back performer should begin with natural gestures and gradually escalate to more absurd movements, giving the front performer time to establish the scene before the physical comedy overwhelms it. Props multiply the comedy. A cooking demonstration with real ingredients gives the arms performer concrete actions that create genuine surprise.
History
Poison Arms belongs to the family of arms exercises that have been a staple of physical comedy and short-form improv since at least the 1970s. The format appeared regularly on the television program Whose Line Is It Anyway? and became one of the most recognizable short-form structures in audience-participation shows. The exercise draws on a longer tradition of puppetry and physical dissociation comedy.
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Related Games
Arms
Arms is a short-form game in which one player stands behind another, extending their arms through the front player's sleeves to serve as their hands. The front player speaks and reacts while the hidden player's arms create unpredictable physical business. It is one of the most recognized and widely performed short-form games.
Helping Hands
Helping Hands is a short-form game in which one performer stands in front of another and extends their arms through the front performer's sleeves or from behind, so that the back performer's hands serve as the front performer's arms. The front performer speaks and reacts while the back performer's hands gesture, handle props, and physically enact whatever the scene requires. The dissonance between speech and gesture -- and the unpredictable behavior of the "helping hands" -- generates the game's comedy.
Arm Game
Arm Game is a short-form performance game in which one player stands behind another, supplying the arms while the front player provides the voice and head movements. The disconnection between speech and gesture creates physical comedy as the front player must justify whatever the arms do. The game is a staple of short-form shows worldwide.
Hands
Hands is a short-form game in which one player stands behind another and provides their arms, creating the physical mismatch between one performer's body and another's hands. The front performer speaks while the hidden performer's hands create unpredictable gestures and activities. The game is one of the most recognizable and widely performed short-form games.
Sideways
Sideways is a physical constraint game in which the entire scene is performed with performers' bodies oriented to one side rather than facing the audience directly. The sideways orientation creates a flattened visual plane that forces performers to rethink conventional blocking and find new spatial solutions. The game develops spatial creativity and challenges performers' habitual relationships to the audience and stage space.
How to Reference This Page
The Improv Archive. (2026). Poison Arms. Retrieved September 28, 2026, from https://improvarchive.org/games/poison-arms
The Improv Archive. "Poison Arms." The Improv Archive, 2026. https://improvarchive.org/games/poison-arms.
The Improv Archive. "Poison Arms." The Improv Archive, 2026, https://improvarchive.org/games/poison-arms. Accessed September 28, 2026.
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