Mama has been unusually busy for a character from a TV show that’s been off the air since the early 1990s.

Vicki Lawrence, the actress and comedienne best known as the grouchy matriarch of “Mama’s Family,” has been taking her most famous character on the road since 2002 for stage shows that bring Mama into the 21st century.

She’ll perform both as herself and as Mama at the Southern Kentucky Performing Arts Center at 7:30 p.m. Saturday.

Tickets can be purchased by calling SKyPAC’s ticket office or on the center’s website, www.thesky pac.com, where they range from $20 to $50.

Lawrence said that, after a 2001 reunion of “The Carol Burnett Show,” the variety series where Mama made her first appearance, she wanted to bring Mama out of retirement and bring the character’s trademark cantankerousness to bear on the modern world.

“She gets angry about everything from women putting makeup on in the car to toilets you’ve got to flush three times before you can pull your pants up,” she said.

“I just thought it would be fun to turn her loose,” Lawrence said. “I didn’t want to do a retrospective show.”

The show, having started shortly after the Sept 11, 2001, terror attacks, was originally intended to be a 90-minute escape, and it still is, but Mama has been talking more about political issues in recent years, Lawrence said.

“Politics have gotten so comical, you might as well dip your toe in,” she said.

The show is billed as “Vicki Lawrence & Mama: A Two-Woman Show,” because Lawrence also performs as herself.

“We split the show in half, and I pretty much open for Mama,” she said.

The show starts with Lawrence discussing her life and career.

“Everybody wants to know how I met (Burnett) and how Mama came about,” she said, adding that the Lawrence portion of the show answers all the questions she frequently hears about her time on “The Carol Burnett Show” and her most famous character.

The Lawrence portion of the show also includes a rendition of her 1973 hit, “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia.”

“If you have a juggernaut of a hit, you’ve got to sing it,” she said.

During the show, Mama gets a chance to flex her musical muscles as well, with a rap song about her life, Lawrence said.

“It’s fun to keep her but also keep her up to date,” she said.