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FOR THE KIDS : Slime Enough for All at Nickelodeon Show : It’s noisy, wild and crazy and involves both parents and children from the audience in silly, messy games.

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SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

For kids who love to wallow in slime or get slammed in the face with a cream pie, Nickelodeon’s “Wild and Crazy Kids” is back in town for three gooey, gloppy shows Saturday.

For those not up on this mania, the shows are a live rendition of Nickelodeon’s TV program where kids and parents from the audience are selected for messy, incredibly silly games.

This year the action takes place at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza, with shows at 11 a.m., 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. (Tickets are $14.50 and $18.50.)

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The hourlong show is hosted by Donnie Jeffcoat, who began emceeing the TV series when he was 15. After 60 episodes, he joined the live tour during his senior year at Irvine High School. That was five years ago, and he’s still doing it, with co-host Bryan Stinson.

The show races along at a noisy, frenetic pace. Players selected for the games might take the stage for “Pillowmania II,” where team members put on jackets filled with water balloons and slug it out with pillows.

In “The Big Bus,” adults are placed behind a cut-out of a school bus with their faces showing through the windows. The kids barrage them with slime and other gooey stuff. Then they clean them off with blasts from high-powered squirt guns. The team to go from dirty to clean first wins.

There are other games--”Slimy Crossword Puzzle” and “Musical Pies,” and maybe something called “All Wrapped Up,” where adults revolving on a large lazy Susan are wrapped up in a continuous piece of cloth, then unwrapped.

As a warm-up to all this zaniness, Jeffcoat does a Nickelodeon trivia game. Here’s a tip: the three words that will get you slimed are “I don’t know.”

Don’t expect to see this madness on TV. Nickelodeon Studios spokeswoman Michelle Ahrens said the shows aren’t taped for airing later on TV. The show isn’t in production anymore, although the series still runs.

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Teen-agers from the Hundred Hats Theater Co. researched the Ventura County Museum of History and Art’s collection of oral histories for their latest effort, “Tales of Fortune.”

It’s a poignant show about the county’s history from 1860 to 1930, according to director Terry Brenner-Farrell, who researched and wrote the play as part of the theater group’s Teen-age Summer Workshop.

It will be performed in three locations: the Santa Paula Theater Center, 2:30 p.m. Saturday and 7:30 p.m. Sunday; the Ventura County Museum of History and Art, 2:30 p.m. Aug. 26; and Gull Wings Children’s Museum, 5:30 p.m. Aug. 27. Tickets are $5.

Brenner-Farrell said she provided the framework for the production, then directed the 17-member cast to the museum’s oral histories to better understand the people and the period and to glean colorful anecdotes for the script.

The play is a string of historical events, narrated by an actor playing Thomas Bard, a Ventura County pioneer and U.S. senator. Although it highlights some of the county’s most famous families, it isn’t only about them. It touches on such events as Prohibition and the treatment of the Chinese and the Chumash Indians.

The play also weaves in little snippets of history, such as the time a Ventura local stepped out onto Main Street (they wet the dirt streets to keep the dust down in those days), slipped, and broke his nose. And it mentions a doctor who treated the Chumash, accepting hand-woven baskets as payment, and a Saticoy man who died after getting trapped in quicksand.

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Fillmore musician Edward Wahl, musical director for the play, researched the music of the period and adapted popular songs to the historical events.

For information, call 525-4645.

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Here’s a freebie: A Simi Valley-based theater group is performing the fairy tale, “Beauty and the Beast,” this weekend at the Rancho Simi Community Park’s amphitheater at Erringer Road and Royal Avenue.

The production is the work of Gypsies in a Trunk, a nonprofit branch of The Gypsy Players, which performs murder mysteries and youth productions. John and Roxanne Diesel founded the group in North Carolina in 1991. When the couple relocated to California, they re-formed the group here.

“Beauty and the Beast” will be performed at 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Roxanne Diesel wrote the script, based on the French tale. The cast and crew, ranging in age from 13 to 49, are all Simi Valley residents.

The group, working with the Rancho Simi Recreation and Park District, will stage “Pinocchio” and “Rumpelstiltskin” this fall as part of the series, Fairy Tales in the Park.

For information, call 584-4400.

Details

* WHAT: Nickelodeon’s “Wild and Crazy Kids.”

* WHEN: Saturday, 11 a.m., 3 and 7 p.m.

* WHERE: Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza, 2100 E. Thousand Oaks Blvd., Thousand Oaks.

* COST: $14.50 and $18.50.

* FYI: For tickets by phone, call 583-8700.

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