A number of intentionally vague years ago, I was teaching two improv classes on a Saturday. I would teach one class at 11am and then another at 2pm. They were both Level 1 classes and they started the same week. They were in the same venue and in the same room of that venue too.

So, just to ram my point home, same teacher, teaching the same syllabus, on the same day, in the same room. Same, same, same. I’m not a man of science but that seems like a controlled set of variables right there.

So, here’s the thing, one group had a terrible time. They were scared, unenthusiastic, cynical, fragmented and entirely lacking in spark. The second group (or was it the first?), on the other hand, were an absolute dream. They were cohesive, funny, supportive and playful.

Even more interestingly, in the first week of both groups, they were basically indistinguishable from each other. They all seemed to have an epic time.

So what changed? Why did one group soar even as the other nose-dived into oblivion? As much as the British part of me wants to blame it wholly on my teaching, I don’t think that’s the case, because I was crushing it with the other group - exercises and explanations pouring unchecked from my lips like some sort of improv fruit machine hitting the jackpot, week in, week out.

The real cause was abundantly obvious.

It was Charlie’s partner. (I have clever obscured their real name)

From the second week onwards, one student, Charlie (honestly not their real name) brought their partner with them. Said partner, let’s call them Lamp (also not their real name), was there ostensibly to support Charlie, and was really, really, demonstrably and vehemently NOT into improv. They did not like it one bit.

Every exercise I introduced, they politely refused to take part in. Every game I demonstrated had them wrinkling their nose in distaste. Lamp just sort of limply hovered to the side of the room, looking like they wanted to be anywhere but in an improv class. Every week, summoning all my god-given optimism, I would humbly suggest something that Lamp might like to participate in, and every week, without fail, I was greeted by a short, nervous laugh that eloquently inferred that Lamp thought I should get in the sea.

And that was all it took. Suddenly my other students were unable to enjoy themselves, they couldn’t suspend their critical functions enough to feel the joy and discovery of childhood, mainly because those critical functions were perfectly embodied at all times by Lamp, the spectre at the feast, checking their iPhone twice a minute over by the window.

By week four, Charlie and Lamp had both left the class (I am not surprised) but the damage was done, the effects proved irreversible. And that is the paradox of confidence.

To be good, you have to not worry about being good.

As soon as you do start worrying, or you feel judged or critiqued, then there’s no way you’re ever getting into the headspace you need to be an unfettered, free-flowing improv genius. And so you prove your own worst fears a reality, by not being very good, and that awful self-perpetuating cycle continues.

It’s the same on stage, if an audience senses you are nervous, they become worried for you. And you know what a worried audience won’t do? Laugh at your shenanigans. Because they’re also not in the headspace to feel joy. Just empathy.

Needless to say, the obverse is happily true. If we can free ourselves from anxiety, then we tend to do better and then we relax because we’re doing great and that’s when the improv magic starts to flow.

That’s why your improv instructor will get you to make peace with failure, to show you that failing isn’t actually that big a deal in improv. So that you don’t put pressure on yourself to be perfect, which is paradoxically the most important factor in having a good show.

So, in the end, it’s a choice. You can spiral downwards, with every negative thought contributing to the next uninspired scene, that in turn confirms the next negative thought. Or you can wheel towards the heavens, held aloft by your own unexamined self-belief and buoyed by your lived experience of being awesome.

It’s all within your gift.

You just need to switch the lamp off.