Passing events up Hierachies

Hi, I have only recently switched to as3 about 2 days ago. I have a moderate understanding of the language however, I cant get buttons inside movie clips (or deeper) to invoke events on the main stage.
For example, Button AB1 is inside a movie clip with instance name instance1. Inside instance1 lie several other buttons, AB2, AB3 , and so on. The problem is that I cannot get the buttons inside instance1 to invoke events on the main stage.
Namely, when AB1 is clicked I want a separate clip on a different layer of the main stage to gotoAndPlay its contents.

Thank you.