In Hunter X Hunter, Ten is the technique for collecting Nen around your body instead of allowing it to dissipate.
In improv, Ten is listening.
When ideas are brought into a scene but the improvisers are not listening, all that Yen they worked so hard to generate just drifts away, useless, never to be used to build the scene or make the audience happy.
Anything that requires attention to exist is made of Yen. That means that ideas, objects, and characters are made of Yen!
Therefor, Ten is the most fundamental technique in Improv just as it is in Hunter X Hunter. Without listening, you have nothing to work with. Moreoverâ ideas that have been created but not affirmed by others will wither. It is often not enough just to hear your scene partner. They need to know you heard them, and the audience needs to know it too. Ten is the âYesâ in âYes, andâ.
Letâs visualize!
Youâre in an improv scene. Your scene partner says, âYou look happy, dad!â and slings an improv backpack off her shoulder.
Yen is flying. Golden aura (invisible to the untrained!) coalesces around your scene partnerâs words, and catapults towards you. It wreaths your body, dresses you in a T-shirt and crocs. It turns up the corners of your mouth. Yen runs down your scene partnerâs arm, filling the empty space in her hand: A Jansport, manifested from thin air.
And then you say, âIâm done grilling these burgers, grandma!â
Oh no. Are you her dad or her grandson?
The Yen your scene partner lent you dissipates immediately. The Jansport wavers, barely keeping together. Itâs hard to tell if itâs there or not anymore. The spatula youâre holding, the grill in front of you, seem similarly tenuous. Yen is rapidly leaking from the scene, your work undone. The audience can feel it, and it feels bad.
Ten is listening; this is improv without it.
And listening to the words is not enough! You have to âfeel the world implied by the tone of the wordsâ1. Each new idea, you have to reify immediately. If your scene partner says âyou look happy,â and you donât, the scene springs a leak. Embody every gift. Glance at and touch objects. Repeat back offers. Say âyesâ, every time, in every moment, not to the characters, but to the improvisers!
This is not an improv example. This time, youâre at a party. Someone is telling you about the world theyâve built for their D&D campaign.
âItâs like, ancient Aztec, but also thereâs dinosaurs,â they say excitedly.
âThatâs cool,â you say. âHave you played Elden Ring?â
Their enthusiasm wavers. âUh, no, but Iâve heard good things.â
When youâre having a conversation, just as when youâre doing an improv scene, youâre shooting your Yen at the other person. When they listen to honor your words, the Yen sticks to them and stays, they grow brighter, and you lean in. When they listen so they can talk about their own thing, itâs exhausting. All the Yen youâre offering glances off of them and dissipates, and youâd rather be somewhere else.
The same thing happens when you fail to honor an offer in an improv scene. Your scene partner feels their efforts wasted, and the audience sees that loss. If you want to be the person everybody wants to do a scene with, honor every offer. Demonstrate that youâve received it, and are thrilled to have it.
Also, sorry I made you a jerk in both of these examples? Such are the dangers of second-person narration. I can make you do anything!
You eat a whole bucket of sand.
Why did you do that??
Ten is listening, to words, tone, actions, and intention. Ten is saying yes to the improviser, not to their character. Ten is a state of receptiveness. Ten is instinctively honoring every offer.
The first step in becoming a great improviser is learning never to drop Ten! No matter what else is happening in a show, this technique must remain strong. Should it waver, Yen will bleed from your scene, and your scene will die.
For catharsis, letâs revisit our examples, but use Ten this time:
âYou look happy, Dad,â she says, slinging her backpack to the floor.
âI feel happy!â you say, smiling, picking up her backpack and hanging it on the wall.
âItâs ancient Aztec, but also thereâs dinosaurs,â they say excitedly.
âThatâs cool, does everybody have dinosaurs, or like, just the priests?â
âSo the priests actually want to get rid of the dinosaursâŠâ
You donât eat a whole bucket of sand.
When you receive an offer in improv, when your scene partner sends their Yen towards you, and you use Ten, that Yen becomes part of your aura. The audience pays more attention to you. You glow more brightly. And critically, itâs your aura, not your scene partnerâs aura glommed onto you. And your Yen aura is extremely personal to you, which means the way you do Ten is personal to you.
There is a transformation that occurs when an idea is shared. Two people listening to the same offer, even if theyâre listening very, very closely, will take something different from it. If your scene partner says, âYou wouldnât know how it feels to fail out of college, you never event went,â what do you hear loudest? That your scene partnerâs character is hurt? That theyâre mean? That they think youâre less than them? Do you hear that your character wishes they went to college? Or that your character is comically unaware of what the college experience is like, despite growing up in a society filled with media depictions of college life?
The way it lands upon your ear is unique to you, and will dictate the arc of the scene.
As a corollary, your scene partner doesnât know which part of what they just said is most striking to you. Thatâs why saying âYesâ is so important. Not only so they know that you received their offer, but also so they know how you received their offer.
Ten mastery requires that you âpay attention to what you pay attention toâ2. In this way, when your partnerâs Yen becomes part of your aura, it is transformed in a way it could not have been by someone else. Donât just listen. Listen like you.
[1]: Source: Pirate Robot Ninja: An Improv Fable
[2]: Source: A tweet by Amy Krouse Rosenthal, often repeated by John Green in his YouTube videos.