D. Abbey Alter was about 9 when the dragonfly wars broke out.

Raised in rural Wilmington Township, Ms. Alter and a bunch of friends collected dragonflies and butterflies that summer.

The simple child's act of collecting grew over the course of a year into a lesson on death and human tendencies that has stayed with her throughout her life, and forms the basis of "Dragonfly Lake," a 75-minute dance-theater production the Walnut Street Players will perform Saturday at Sharon High School.

The act of collecting turned sinister at the end of that summer when the kids -- there were about seven of them -- caught the "best" dragonfly they had seen all summer.

After arguing over whether to let it go or keep it, the kids agreed to hold it in a terrarium for the night, and let it go the next day.

But the dragonfly died overnight.

With their minds full of Roman Catholic rituals and the Tony Curtis movie "The Vikings," the kids decided to hold a funeral for the dragonfly.

Ms. Alter stole one of her mother's canning jars for a casket, packing the dragonfly in rocks and sealing the jar with wax. The casket was floated on a burning boat -- the lighter fluid also was stolen -- to the middle of the lake, where it sunk.

The next spring, the kids were playing in the water and found the jar.

"We took it out and didn't know what to do because it's like disturbing a tomb," Ms. Alter explained.

They decided to open the jar.

"As soon as the air hit the dragonfly, it exploded into a thousand pieces," Ms. Alter said.

A serendipitous stream of sunlight and the coming of Easter made the children mindful of the resurrection of Christ, and they thought the dragonfly also had been resurrected, making them its disciples.

They formed a dragonfly club ruled over by a high priestess, fashioned costumes and decided they had to have another resurrection.

When the dragonflies came back in May, they caught one and put it in a jar, but this time the insect did not die.

Pouring nail polish remover on a cotton ball -- a trick learned in science class -- and sticking it in the jar, the children killed the dragonfly.

"The funeral got weirder," Ms. Alter said. "We put more costumes on. The leader of the dragonfly club got more Hitlerlike."

Retrieving the jar from the water, the dragonfly did not explode, so the kids pulled it apart and adorned themselves with the body parts.

"And then the dragonfly wars broke out," she said. "Everyone wanted to be the high priestess."

The kids splintered into two groups, and recruited new ones to become slaves. Each group continued the ritual, which concluded by smashing the jars.

"By the end of the summer, all my mother's canning jars were gone, we all hated each other and there was glass all over the lake," Ms. Alter said.

After her mother discovered the missing jars, her father snuck up on the kids while they were performing one of their rituals. He pointed out that the little band of supposed dragonfly worshippers had decimated the local population.

"Now we're killing the thing we revered just so we could have our ritual," said Ms. Alter comparing the episode to William Goldman's book "Lord of the Flies."

Ms. Alter said the dragonfly wars helped her became aware of human nature, death and man's impact on the environment.

It was very easy for the kids to step over the line to killing the dragonflies, and for the group to convince individuals to do things they didn't want to do.

"We have an inherent violent tendency," she said. "Part of growing up is to come to terms with that and get over it."

Ms. Alter, whose husband, James Willaman, wrote the musical score, believes the story is relevant with wars still being fought over religion.

In "Dragonfly Lake," much of the story is told through dance and a group of children miming the rituals.

"What dance does really well is action and emotion," she said.

A narrator helps establish the time frame and elaborate on the philosophical underpinnings, she said.

The group dynamic that she recalled as a 9-year-old exists among the children performing in the production. The older children have taken it upon themselves to make sure the younger children -- the youngest is 4 -- are where