Kent Streed, who directed the production, said the scenes have been pulled straight out of real-life events. The show, simply titled “Kids,” is a collection of observations on motherhood, told by their kids, and stars around 10 students in the Pendragon Jr. after-school group. They will perform written and improvised material on children behaving well, but mostly children behaving badly.

“It’s Mother’s Day, so we’ll remind them what all the mothers got into when they signed on for motherhood,” Streed said.

The actors are between the ages of 8 and 16, from Saranac Lake and Keene to Saratoga. They put on their best grumpy faces to act out scenes of them not eating food, watching too much television and doing everything but cleaning their room.

The performances were filmed in April over Zoom, with some on home cameras.

A disgusted River Gray hands a plate of cottage cheese back to his mother in a skit from Pendragon Theater’s Mother’s Day performance “Kids.” (Photo provided)

“It’s neat to see the kids take on the filming responsibilities,” Streed said. “They’re pretty savvy. They’re able to say ‘No, click over here, Kent. That’s it. You got it.'”

He’s directed over Zoom a few times before, and while it has its drawbacks, he said he was able to use the new technology to get good performances out of his young actors.

A few times, after a Zoom rehearsal went well, he’d tell the actor, “You’re done,” and used that recording as the final performance.

“Then they didn’t have the opportunity to overthink what they were doing, so they were more like kids,” Streed said.

He said he finds their behavior incredibly amusing and was glad they were excited to create something. He said they told him they were so glad to have something to do. He was, too.

“It’s interesting getting to know these kids,” he said. “Getting to hear what their day is like and what they’ve been going through with the weird COVID situation.”

Interspersed with the skits, Amy Coddinton-Burnett will read snippets from Erma Bomback’s famous parenting column “At Wit’s End,” which ran in the Enterprise and other newspapers for years.

Also, five instrumental versions of songs that have “mom” in the title will be played. Mothers are challenged to name them all.