THE WORLD IS HER STAGE; ANA DIVAC HAS HER OWN ACT, JUGGLING FANTASY AND REALITY.

Byline: Karen Crouse

You'll hear the F-word more than if you were at Oakland Arena last week for Latrell Sprewell's R-17 return.

You'll see more acts of thuggery than if you were courtside at a Knicks-Heat playoff game.

You'll feel more squeamish than if you were at Staples Center watching Shaquille O'Neal shoot free throws with the game on the line.

Contrary to popular belief, ``The Powder Keg,'' a play running through Sunday at the Odyssey Theatre in West Los Angeles, is not about Atlanta's Isaiah Rider or the Lakers' 1998-99 season.

The collection of 11 random scenes, loosely tied together by characters who make consecutive appearances, examines the psychodynamics of the ongoing conflict in the former Yugoslavia on one-time friends, neighbors and countrymen.

The ensemble cast includes Ana Divac, the wife of former Laker and current Sacramento King Vlade Divac. The play has been a deeply affecting experience for the Divaces, who are from the former Yugoslavia.

They met and were married in Ana's hometown of Belgrade and came to the U.S. when the Lakers selected Divac with the 26th overall pick in the 1989 draft.

It pains them to know the friends and relatives they left behind in Belgrade have grown as inured to air raids as Angelenos are to traffic. The Divaces returned to the city for a visit over the summer but stayed just two days, on account of the bombing.

``It was too dangerous,'' Ana said with a shudder after a recent performance. ``You look at your friends, all young, beautiful, smart, educated people, and you wonder, What's going to happen to them and their lives?''

CNN has become a friend who visits Ana in L.A. and Vlade in Sacramento nightly, bringing news from back home. Sometimes it is uplifting, like when President Clinton paid a visit to Kosovo earlier in the week and promised to help rebuild the war-torn province.

Most of the time, however, the news is depressing.

On those nights Vlade is happy to lose himself in basketball.

``I can actually focus on something else for a couple hours,'' he said by telephone the other night. ``It keeps my mind from going crazy.''

On those nights Ana struggles after the curtain falls and it's time to go home to the couple's three children, ages 8, 5 and 15 months.

``If I hear bad news from back home, it's a hard night,'' she said. ``It's easier to get into my characters but harder to get out of character.''

Ana was studying drama when she met Divac, who was playing for a club team in Belgrade. When the NBA beckoned him, she put her acting career on hold.

The life of an NBA wife is sort of like a play; on the stage, everything looks lovely, just perfect, but behind the scenes it can be chaotic. When you're married to a professional athlete, so many people look at you as a mere appendage of your husband - you know, attached at the elbow - you can start to see yourself that way, too.

Ana said she's lucky. Divac wanted a thinker for a wife, not a trophy. He's plainly proud of her acting. He encouraged her to continue studying her craft in the States and supported her without reservations when the opportunity to play two scenes in ``Powder Keg'' presented itself.

Her roles are not for the unemotive.

In one scene, Ana is threatened by a knife-wielding stranger on a bus. In the other, she plays the Serbian girlfriend of a Macedonian man who is attacked by a Macedonian Mafia boss while the couple is enjoying a night out on the town.

Vlade has seen the play three times since it opened last month.

``It's so exciting to see Ana perform,'' he said. ``I get more nervous watching her than I do playing basketball. When I'm there, I'm kind of acting the parts along with her.''

At 7-foot-1, Vlade is probably the last person you'd want to sit behind in the intimate theater. Sasha Rendulic, the play's executive producer, chuckled when Vlade's name came up in conversation. Divac, he said, has brought the concept of the bench coach to the theater.

``The first time he saw the play (during a limited engagement at Cal State L.A.) he was very critical,'' Rendulic said. ``He said something to Ana like, `You didn't look scared enough!' ''

Ana Divac, rearing her head back to laugh at the recollection, said, ``I knew he'd be brutally honest.''

She's on the stage for less than 20 minutes but Ana leaves the theater after every performance drained. ``It's very hard to feel these emotions,'' she said. ``They're very painful.''

She summons the strength by visualizing her friends back home.

``I feel like my people are in jail and on top of the jail is this crazy man (Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milosevic),'' she said. ``It's a helpless feeling. By doing this play, I feel like I'm doing something for my friends back home.''

Maybe it's because she's straddling two continents, but the world looks small as a basketball to Ana Divac these days.

``The bloodshed back home looks so far away when you're watching on TV,'' she said. ``But if something like this can happen with my country, with my generation, it can happen anywhere. That's what scares me.''

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PHOTO Ex-Laker Vlade Divac has seen his wife Ana's play, ``Powder Keg,'' three times, and is her biggest fan. The scenes depict life in their homeland of Yugoslavia.

Bob Galbraith/Associated Press