Using a variable to indicate an active movie clip

I’m trying to use a variable to indicate a movie clip is active. there are multiple clips, about fifteen of them, so I’m trying to get around having to talk to them all at once. I figured I could have the clip say it’s target name as a variable, and then use that variable to target it, but I’m not sure how to use the variable in an action. here’s what I was thinking:

the active clip sends it’s target name to the timeline as a variable “active-clip-target-name”

the button in another clip, to communicate with it, says:
“_root.”+“active-clip-target-name”+".play()";

but this is not working at all. does anyone know the correct syntax for this kind of thing?