Applying actions to multible objects

Can anyone tell me how to group objects together so that you can change their parimeters all at once. Like if I have a 7 boxes on screen with the instance name box1, box2, ect… and i wanted to do change them via action script, like make them all partailly invisible when an event happens. How would I do that. I’ve tried stuff like

box = ["_root.red", “_root.blue”];
box._rotation = 40;

and
box = [_root.red, _root.blue];
box._rotation = 40;

and

box = (_root.red), (_root.blue);
box._rotation = 40;

but they don’t don’t seem to work. One of them changes only the last one.