Sophie attempts to intimidate Greg

Sophie enters the room and takes a seat at the table, looking up silently at the uncomfortable-looking Alex, before looking around the room and asking “Is this right?”. After receiving the task brief from Alex and reading the first line, Sophie’s mouth drops open, and she observes “You were acting. And you did it well.”

Sophie then starts her attempt almost immediately, hovering awkwardly by the door for a while, before deciding that it isn’t quite working, and looking around the room for more inspiration.

While attempting to come up with a new idea, she defines tension as “the apprehension that something bad’s going to happen”. She then steps up onto the chair at the table, and makes eye contact with Alex, before picking one leg up and balancing on the other. When Alex suggests that it’s “like tightrope walking, but on a chair”, she agrees that it is.

Attempting to up the ante, she then balances a small ceramic bowl on her head while performing her chair-balancing act (in a scene somewhat reminiscent of her attempt at the ‘Do the riskiest thing with this egg’ task).

She then attempts to up the ante again, by also holding an unlit candle in one of her hands, and making a claw with the other, while poking her tongue out and hissing dramatically at Alex.

In the studio, Greg tells Sophie that “watching you standing on one leg with a cup on your head, hissing like a fucking snake, is the least tense I’ve ever felt.” When Sophie attempts to argue that he hadn’t gotten the full effect of it, since he wasn’t seated at a lower level, like Alex had been, he asks to experience it for himself. He then sits down on the stage floor, while Sophie climbs up on her chair and recreates the experience above him. Greg is completely unaffected by Sophie’s attempt to intimidate him, though, and ultimately awards her just 1 point.

(Written by Karl Craven)

(Illustrations collected by Jenny R and adjusted by David Fuller)