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Media Credit: Laura Bitner Freshmen Alex Rozenshteyn and Giselle Chang play chimps in an experiment in David Ives's play Words, Words, Words.

Midway through Christopher Durang's absurdly funny Words, Words, Words, which features three monkeys forced by a cruel Dr. Rosenbaum to write Hamlet on typewriters through sheer luck alone, one disgruntled monkey turns to the other and asks about their master, "What's Hamlet to him, or he to Hamlet?" - a parody by complete chance of similar immortal words by the eponymous Hamlet himself. A play that has Infinite Monkey Theory and allusions to Shakespeare? Here is something that both computer science and Writing Seminars majors can enjoy. Welcome, budding freshman talent, to the world of Hopkins theater. Though the occasional bad apple slips by, for the most part the performances here are first-rate, and this fall's Freshman One-Acts were no exception.

In the first of the One-Acts, Time Flies, two happy-go-lucky and amorous mayflies, May and Horace (played by freshmen Emma Brodie and Pierce Delahunt), begin to worry that life has no real significance beyond mating and dying, after learning of their species' unfortunate single-day lifespan in a TV nature show. The play, directed by senior Joseph Micali, puts a ludicrous twist on every person's fears of their own impending mortality and questions about life's deeper significance. The acting was good (though one might get the impression that it would be funnier in more experienced actors' hands - the hilarious writing of David Ives is difficult to live up to, after all) and the costumes fittingly comical.

Funeral Parlor, written by Christopher Durang and directed by junior Sarah Feinmark, was arguably the best of the six One-Acts. The play boasted an excellent performance by freshman Max Dworin as Marcus, a socially inept funeral mourner who felt that talk of empty caskets, practical jokes, seances and Irish funeral keenings are perfectly acceptable topics of conversation with the deceased's widow, Susan (freshman Katie Osborn). Awkward as he may be, Marcus nevertheless had good intentions and drew the audience's sympathy in the end, prodding Susan to finally surrender her mask of artificial calm and give into the cathartic power of grief.

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