What's great about this quote is that it distills a whole mess of pieces of advice into one simple mantra. It can refer to yourself as an improviser - trust that you're good enough to be on stage, trust that you are funny or quick or talented enough, just go on stage and make things happen - and how you should react to your fellow castmates - trust that they will support you, trust that they will make offerings you can support, go wherever they want to take you, trust that they will want to go where you want to take them...

But let's just keep it simple: Trust and Go.

I had a great debriefing session the other day after four of my slightly inexperienced improvisers had just finished what turned out to be a really great scene. They did a great job of listening and reacting to each other, and bringing their own flavor to the scene.

In the debrief, however, each of them made comments about where they had planned to go in the scene. I mentioned to them that despite all of their plans, and that the scene didn't really go in any of those directions, they still managed to create a great scene.

That's incredibly challenging for high school improvisers - to go onto a stage with nothing planned. Professional improvisers have trouble doing it, much less insecure teenagers. What's great about Allen's quote is how it tries to get past the preconception that your improv scene will either be a success or a failure. Only rarely have I seen a "bad" improv scene that also failed to entertain the audience - most of the time, improv scenes are bad or good only when judged against our own preconceptions.

Here are a couple of ideas to help improvisers just live in the moment.

• Face your fear and just do it.
  Ignore your own ideas for the scene and just walk on stage and put yourself in that scene. Listen for an opportunity to become a character, solve a problem, cause a problem, or establish a relationship, and just do it.
• There are no mistakes, only opportunities.
  Everything done or mentioned in a scene is now part of the reality of the scene. Instead of ignoring it, or trying to "correct" it, just let it be. Sometimes the best scenes come from things that at first seem contrary, but good improvisers who listen and work together can find a way to make them make sense.
• Be brave and trusting.
  This is one that is important for everyone in the scene to adhere to. Someone's going to have to play the underdog, the problem-maker, the victim - if everyone in the scene is brave, then anyone can play that character. And if everyone trusts their scene partners (and recognizes the trust that everyone else places in him or her), then everyone knows that someone in the scene will get them out of it.