‘I Feel Bad Because There Is WAR’ : Acting Out Their Fears : Coping: Theater groups express their feelings about war before and after performances. One troupe helps its young audience do the same.

“There’s something going on in the world right now,” says director Debbie Devine. “Who knows what it is?”

The answer comes in chorus from a large group of mostly 5- to 8-year-olds:

“A war.”

The exchange is taking place at the Westside’s Odyssey Theatre Ensemble, where, in a few minutes, Devine and her Glorious Players troupe will present the children’s show “Cirque du L.A.: Working Without Annette.”

The play has nothing to do with war--it’s about a little girl’s fear of change--but Devine and the cast of adult actors are taking a few minutes before the show to help children express their anxieties.

When asked where the war is being fought, the young audience members answer: “Iraq,” “Israel,” “Saudi Arabia” and “far away.”

Five-year-old Remy Savard says, “There’s someone I know there.”

Devine describes some of the different emotions that war may provoke--anger, sadness, fear--and asks the cast to make a “not-let-your-feelings-out” machine. The comic actors mime various machine parts, using lots of tension, grunts and groans.

Devine then asks the cast to form a “let-your-feelings-out” machine, which they do so with smiles, sighs and relaxed motions. The message gets across.

Then, audience volunteer Michael Rimoin, 7, comes onstage and demonstrates “scared.” As he cowers, hands over face, Devine asks the cast to demonstrate how to deal with those scared feelings.

First, the actors turn their backs on Michael and act casual, humming, looking at the ceiling. Next, they tote him back and forth. None of which works, as Devine points out.

“How do you get rid of fear?” Savard asks.

“Being with your friends,” Devine says.

“Laughter,” she adds, and the cast tickles a giggling Michael.

“You can read a book,” Devine continues. “Or,” says a cast member, “you can see a play!”

And the show begins.

The Glorious Players--theater arts teachers at elementary schools on the Westside--had found their students wanting reassurance about the war. After the hostilities began, Devine decided that children coming to see their Saturday show might have similar fears.

The director, who also works with emotionally disturbed adolescents, explained: “I talked to a psychologist before I did this. She said it was critical that children don’t hold their feelings in, that it’s important to acknowledge and validate their fears. It’s also important they have correct information.”

The members of the Glorious Players “are just about divided in half politically” over the war, Devine said, “but we’re together in our efforts to reassure children.”

The war has also come to Santa Monica Playhouse’s “Dear Gabby,’ a teen drama about the pains and confusion of growing up. But here, it’s often the show’s young cast members who find reassurance from the largely adult audience during their weekend performances.

The cast, ages 12 to 21, holds regular post-show discussions about the show’s themes, such as fear of failure and peer pressure. Now, war is the main topic.

“Obviously people in the audience have the same kind of uncertainties as our kids do,” said Evelyn Rudie, co-writer and co-director (with Chris DeCarlo).

“Having someone older say, ‘I don’t know,’ makes them feel better. Adults in the audience say, ‘I’m grown up and I’m expected to know how to feel, but I’m confused and frightened, too.’ ”

Aisha Wagle, 17, one of four actors who alternate in the lead, said she was surprised “in a good way” that the talks elicited so many different opinions. “I learned a lot from that,” she said. “You have to hear every side of the issue before you make up your mind.” Wagle said she is comforted to know that, whatever their opinions, people are thinking about the war, that “it’s not just blindly happening in the world.”

Rudie said that “the biggest thing that has come out of this” for the diverse cast--it includes an Israeli, anti-war protesters and a girl whose father just returned from a business trip to the Middle East--”is that no matter what side of the issue they stand on, everyone is agreed that the only way to get through it is with unity.”

Both shows are running indefinitely.