First impressions — you only get one chance make them. Or do you?

In the world of playwright David Ives’, ordinary events seem surreal and surreal events seem ordinary.

Ives” plays will be performed tonight at the Maintenance Shop as a compilation of six one-act comedies called “All in the Timing.”

One of the plays, “The Sure Thing,” focuses on a series of interactions between different people. In it, the characters portray people meeting for the first time.

What makes the ordinary encounter out-of-the-ordinary is that the characters keep replaying the situations over again until they get the results they want.

“The remarkable thing [about Ives” work] is that it is about people trying to get it right,” said the director of the plays and a graduate student in interdisciplinary studies, Phillip Martens, in a press release. “In the plays, just as in real life, sometimes you have to go back and start over again,” he said.

Other plays involve a group of monkeys trying to write Hamlet and the mysterious death of Russian writer and politician Ivan Trotsky. In it, a number of possible situations surrounding Trosky’s strange demise are presented.

The collaboration and collision between real and unreal events are the premise of Ives” plays. That, and his use of humor, draw the audience in.

Performer Erin Baal, a senior in performing arts said about Ives” work, “Ives’ takes very different, very unusual circumstances and combines them into a fascinating show.”

But no matter the situation, happily ever after is the result. “Ives” work illustrates his own positive outlook on life,” Martens said, “that everything will work out.”

A cast of eight ISU students will perform “All in the Timing”at the M-Shop tonight starting at 8 p.m. Tickets are available at the door for $2.