The Ram’s Head Winter One Acts open tonight in Roble Studio Theater, featuring three original plays written by Stanford students. Inevitably, one goes into student theater feeling nervous that the work will be hopelessly amateurish, embarrassing or just plain bad. Luckily, the cast takes the shows seriously, producing a night heavy on drama but with a dash of humor.

The first one act is “Dinner Party,” by Brandon Silberstein ‘08 and directed by Val Sinckler ‘01. It revolves around two TV personalities who are married to each other and who have asked their producers to dinner in hopes of gaining more airtime. Next thing they know, two complete strangers walk in, sit down at the dinner table and, as they gaze at their reflections in the silverware, declare that they would like the cucumber salad, please, and the chicken. A certain amount of hamming ensues, as husband (Nathaniel Nelson ‘11) and wife (Lauren Bell ‘11) dash back and forth between the dining room and the kitchen, blustering and saying things like, “My God!” But their alarm has grounds, as it becomes clear that the cucumbers and carrots for which their visitors ask may have had more uses than simply as food, and careers may be at stake. The visitors also have secrets of their own, and seem to urgently require a chicken. Suffice to say that, by the end, the cops are involved and everyone has their hands on their heads.

The second play — “How They Might Have Loved and Flown” written by Lyndsay Vogel ‘10 and directed by Cassaundra Vergel ‘10 — opens with a teacher, with his back to the audience, barking good-natured banter at his class while students stand and read the kind of naively earnest compositions many people may have been guilty of in high school, but to which no one admits. The action quickly spins itself into a love triangle: Abigail (Roselyn Hallett ‘08) is caught between her two best friends, one of whom she is dating, and the other of whom, inconveniently, she loves. The former, Alex (Max Friedman ‘11), is somewhere between chronically apologetic and oblivious, staring dreamily up at the ceiling while he spews juvenile philosophy. Galen, his best friend (Brandon Silberstein ‘08) sneakily steals Abigail when he’s not looking. Silberstein is a fascinatingly charismatic performer: Of short stature, he swaggers around the stage in a manner reminiscent of Al Pacino, his bunched shoulders and distinctive face making emphatic points whenever he wants them to. Hallett, meanwhile, is not well served by the role, which leaves her relatively passive between two pyschologically complicated men, so look for her as Lavinia in the Shakespeare Society production of “Titus Andronicus” later this quarter.

The final show is “The Corner,” written by William Von Hoene ‘08 and directed by Val Sinckler ‘01. It is more or less about what a Stanford student, Dutch (Grant Newsome ‘10), finds when he goes home to Chicago. His ex-girlfriend, Lauren (Natalia Duong ‘10), alternately hates and loves him, but mostly she hates him. Luckily, his friends still like him, and the old lady at the local fast-food joint (Naomi Andebrhan ‘09) is still there to dispense motherly advice. The opening scene is a beautifully composed vision of blankets, pillows and a chair strewn about the stage, cell phones variously beeping, ringing and thumping hip-hop into the emptiness. The actors emerge, and as their fluent dialogue skates back and forth, one can’t help but think that no generation but ours could sound so good on the phone. Von Hoene has the idiom down perfectly, even down to the catch-phrases we use as filler: “That shit was awkward,” Dutch says after hanging up on Lauren. But the momentum slackens in the second scene, returning only at the end with a final confrontation between Dutch and Lauren which, as the two mumble vengeful intimacies to each other beneath a street lamp, veers perilously close to self-indulgent incoherence. The final scene, a dashboard chat between Dutch and one of his friends, was drowned out by the soundtrack, but of the three this plays is nevertheless the most subtle, and the most mature.

Writing plays — not to mention producing them — is tough, and the cast and crew deserve kudos for their guts in putting this together.