In 1979, Phillip Lopate directed a Broadway version of Uncle Vanya-starring New York City fifth and sixth graders. Lopate found that the “hidden agendas” beneath Chekhov's dialog resonated with the young actors' lives. Filmmaker Sasha Waters Freyer was one of the students involved with that production. Making this film thirty years later, she reconnected with many of her former classmates, who are shown in footage from the era as well as in contemporary interviews. For Freyer, the film's final message is that “childhood animates our adult lives and it is through the arts that we all connect to this living childhood within us.”