FOR THE KIDS : Famous Farm Tales Recast for Big City : Theater group, which blends Aesop’s fables with operetta and ballet, brings lessons of life to Civic Arts Plaza.

The Children’s Theatre Company of Minneapolis is back in Ventura County on Saturday with another kids’ production, this one a musical twist on an old standby: “Animal Fables From Aesop.”

But don’t get the idea that this is some cutesy, sing-song version of the famous fables. It’s billed as a play-within-a-play, kind of an operetta and a ballet rolled into one.

Sponsored by the Ventura County Children’s Festival, this innovative show takes the stage at 3 p.m. at Ventura High School. Tickets are $14 for adults and $12 for children.

The Children’s Theatre Company has been around for 30 years, taking such classics as “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm” on tour around the country. Last year, the group stopped off in Ventura County for its sophisticated version of “The Jungle Book.”

This year’s production is a collection of 15 of Aesop’s fables, blended with song and dance. The setting is a country fair where the adult actors, as animals, come together to present their instructive stories in a play. The only dialogue comes from the manager of this animal troupe, who has the role of the goat.

Most of the stories will sound familiar--”The Country Mouse and the City Mouse,” “The Hare and the Tortoise.” In fact, the tale of the race between the rabbit, so cocky that he naps along the way, and the plodding turtle is one that is carried, bit by bit, throughout the performance. The others are vignettes.

The production draws from Barbara McClintock’s 1991 picture book by the same name. The sets are styled after the book’s illustrations, which have a 19th-Century flavor. The masks and costumes of the characters--the cat, fox, lamb, wolf, mice, hare, tortoise, dogs--look like those in the book.

“We tried to maintain a real sense of the style of the book,” said Wendy Lehr, director of the show.

In the story of the country and city mice, the set is magnified and the mice actors jump off a huge slab of sponge cake and toss plums like basketballs, Lehr said.

The dancing is 19th-Century ballet, with a little music hall and vaudeville pizazz. Some of it is merely exaggerated gestures and mime. The music, all original but prerecorded, sounds like Gilbert and Sullivan with a few twists.

“It’s not a moralistic telling of the stories,” Lehr said. “It has a sense of twinkle, in that it keeps it from being too instructive.”

The practical wisdom of Aesop’s fables comes through. Like the tale of the “Fox Without a Tail” with its moral: no point pretending to hate what you’ve lost. But the moral is wrapped around a zippy song about the pros and cons of having a tail, a tune that manages to rhyme “prehensile” with “utensil.”

Just who was Aesop, kids might ask? He was a Greek folk hero, said to have lived more than 2,000 years ago. For a time, he lived as a slave but was ultimately freed, after which he traveled widely. His short, clever fables, passed down through centuries, said a lot about humanity, injustice and truth--even though it all came out of the mouths of animals.

Saturday’s production runs slightly more than an hour and is appropriate for kids 4 and older.

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For older kids, the Young Artists Ensemble in Thousand Oaks is staging “Teach Me How to Cry,” a poignant drama about a group of teen-agers and their parents in a small town during the 1950s.

One of the teen-agers is a high school girl, the daughter of an unwed mother, who has never really learned to express her emotions. She tries out for the lead in a school play and, through a friendship with a boy, finally learns how to release her feelings.

The play runs at 7:30 p.m. Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays through Feb. 18 at the Conejo Valley Adult School auditorium, 1025 Old Farm Road, Thousand Oaks. Tickets are $7. For information and reservations, call 499-4355.

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How do you point girls in the direction of math and science careers? You offer a conference with workshops taught by the pros, all women, of course.

The Thousand Oaks branch of the American Assn. of University Women is putting one on Feb. 11 for students in sixth through 12th grades. Participants will find workshops in everything from DNA analysis to veterinary medicine.

The conference runs from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Newbury Park High School, 456 N. Reino Road. Cost is $5. For information, call 499-8945.

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The Parachute Express, one of the biggest names in kid show biz, will be on stage Sunday at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza. The 2 p.m. show is in the auditorium. Tickets are $12 and $10.

This peppy trio, based in Los Angeles, has been around since 1983. You might have seen them on the Disney Channel in one of their videos doing favorites such as “Walkin in My Neighborhood” and “Polka Dots, Checks and Stripes.”

The group tours all over the country. Last year they performed at the White House for its Easter egg hunt, and they also sang the national anthem at Fenway Park.