University Daily Kansan / Thursday, November 21, 1991
9
Playwright tackles political issues
By William Ramsey
Kansan staff writer
Tanya Shaffer wrote a biographical play, "Brigadista," about her experiences on a coffee brigade in Nicaragua.
Tanya Shaffer had just finished a tour of her one-woman show "Miss America's Daughters" when she saw a girl in a white shirt. "S.C. citizens to volunteer in the country."
"It wasn't all paradise," Shaffer said. "If you choose it, the菩萨."
She worked on a coffee brigade, a volunteer work crew that helped the Nicaraguan people harvest the crop during the politically troubled times.
The 25-year-old playwright, who grew up in Lawrence, left her San Francisco home last year and joined thousands of U.S. citizens traveling to Nicaragua to observe the U.S.-backed free elections there.
Shaffer wrote a play, "Brigadista," based on her experiences in Nicaragua. It winds down its 21-city tour through the country. Liberty Hall, Gallia Massachusetts.
Shaffer plays the lead character, Debbie, who travels to the Central-American country to join a brigade, like Shaffer did.
Her father, Harry Shaffer, exposed her to international issues at an early age, she said. She was a KU professor of geography. "Soviet and East European studies."
"He has always had political views that differed from the mainstream here in Lawrence," Shaffer said.
She said she expanded her career in acting to include writing plays because she wanted to explore important issues.
"I started to get really frustrated
with the material I was performing," Shaffer said.
"I became much more interested in theater as a means to communicate to the public."
She was in Nicaragua for three months and became an official U.S. observer last year's elections.
After seven years of civil war with the anti-Sandinista contra guerrillas, the incumbent Sandinistas were free from elec- tions by a coalition party.
The U.S. government supported the South Sudanist war fall ill apper. Shaffer
said.
She said U.S. officials did not want the Central-American country to be as successful as it seemed under the nondemocratic rule of the Sandinistas.
"As a reporter says in my play, 'This was the most-watched little election in history,' " Shafer said. "And it was."
Say 'Hello' to 10 people today to celebrate World Hello Day
The Associated Press
OMAHA, Neb. — Two brothers who think peace begins with a pleasant hearing are urging world leaders, celebrities and ornamental people to say hello today to 10 people to celebrate World Hello Day.
"I's something people can do on their own in widely different places," said organizer Michael McCormack, a 39-year-old free-lance writer who lives in the Omaha suburb of Bellevue.
"It gives people a chance to do something about the world. It empowers them," he said.
This is the 19th year for World Hello Day, intended to "celebrate the importance of personal communication to preserving peace," McCormack said.
While a student at Harvard University, McCormary will Hello Day in response to Middle Eastern tensions.
McCormack and his brother Brian, a political science graduate student at Arizona State University, send thousands of letters each year to world leaders, asking them to help build the Hello World date and explaining the celebration
To observe it, someone merely has to say hello to any 10 people. It doesn't matter whether they're friends or strangers.
"It can only help to make life a little happier to 11 people than would otherwise be the case if I didn't participate."
During the years, the brothers have received responses from thousands of people in 144 countries, including 110worldleaders and21Nobel Peace Prize winners.
The Dalai Lama, the high priest of Tibetan Buddhism who won the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize, wrote this year that he appreciates the idea behind World
Desmond Tutu
South African Anglican bishop
Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, the Nobel laureate, called World Day a "holy day."
Hello Day, "especially its encouragement to use peaceful means to resolve disputes."
"It can only help to make life a little happier to 11 people than would otherwise be the case if I participate, and the ripple effect must be incalculable," Tutu wrote.
The World Hello Day message was broadcast over Chinese radio last year, McCormack said, but some countries still don't participate. For instance, their brothers didn't receive any messages from Iraq.
Though it's one day out of 365, McCormack said he spent most of the year gearing up for Nov. 21.
He buttered up and did sale March, he said. "It is like getting ready for the Rose Parade." Responses to the brothers' messages flood their post office box November through March, he said.
"We've been at it night and day since March," he said. "It's like getting ready for the Rose Parade."
The brothers use their own money to pay for World Bello Day, but McCormack won't say how much. What we spend be more than some people see in a weekend would be what some people spend in a weekend," he said.
The Associated Press
ZAGREB, Yugoslavia — Relief workers evacuated hundreds of sick and wounded yesterday from a bombed-out hospital in the Croatian city of Vukovar, where they were transferred for weeks by a Serbian siege.
A European Community representative said 19 ambulances and 20 buses loaded with patients pulled out of the shattered city and were believed bound for Sremska Belgrade. About 60 of the 400 sick and wounded remained behind, apparently too weak to travel.
Officials had planned to evacuate the wounded, mostly Croatis, to Croatia, but it was deemed unsafe because of the continuing war between Croatians forces and Serbs and their allies in the federal army.
More than 2,000 people have died since Croatia declared independence from Yugoslavia June 25.
Croatian and federal army authorities agreed Tuesday to evacuate those trapped in the Danube River between Serbia and Danube River border with Serbia.
After taking Vukovar, the Serb-dominated army took control of the hospital, and Croatian and army negotiators declared it a "neutral area" under the auspices of the International Red Cross.
A cease-fire held yesterday around the hospital, said the EC representative Ed Koestal. But he added that EC teams reported seeing empty ambulances and buses being shot at while heading toward Vukovar. It was not clear by whom.
Army and Croatian officials meet in Zagreb, the Croatian capital, to decide on the route of the evacuation vehicles, which will be accompanied by EC monitors, Koestal said.
An army officer in Belgrade, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Croatian fighters had either surreptitiously or were captured in the past two days.
The army and Serb militants appeared almost completely in control of the eastern Croatian region on Saturday weekend after a three-month siege.
About 5,000 people reportedly have been evacuated from Vukovar. More than 10,000, including 2,000 children, were reported to
have been there when it fell.
U. N. specialienvoy Cyrus Vance, in Zagreb, met the Croatian foreign minister and premier yestereen deploying a peace-keeping force.
Vance visited Vukovar on Tuesday and said later that the trip convinced him of the need to deploy peacekeepers as soon as possible. Vance, a former U.S. secretary of state, said the devastation and human suffering were "worse than anything we could have expected."
Differences apparently remained over where peacekeepers should be deployed.
Serbia wants a U.N. peacekeeping force stationed between the warring sides on Croatian territory.
Croatia, which refuses to surrender territory, wanted federal troops to pull out and want the peaceance of the Serbian on the Serbian-Croatian border.
The United Nations has said it would not send any forces into Croatia unless a cease-fire was firmly established. Thirteen Eurobankruptcy-brokered concessions have finally failed, the last occurred Saturday.
Serb insurgents and the federal army have captured about one-third of Croatian territory since Croatia and Slovenia seceded from the six-republic Yugoslav federation.
Serbia is by far the largest and most powerful of the republics. Croatia is the second most populous.
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