A BRIDGE MADE OF WORDS AND DREAMS

SEEN & HEARD

The journey from a Western Australia cattle station into the international theatrical spotlight was a long one for NINGALI LAWFORD, 28. The Australian Aborigine dances, sings and narrates her extraordinary life story in a 90-min. show that has captivated audiences at home and in Europe. Last week Ningali (pronounced Ning-a-lee) was on stage at London's South Bank Center, bridging two wildly different cultures with humor and humanity. Performing in English, which she learned at 13, and two Aboriginal tongues, she recalled her grandfather's advice: "You can go anywhere you want, and do anything you want, but never lose your language because your dreaming, your stories are in your language and without your language you are nothing.''

Hugo Princz waited 40 years for the day when justice would be done and the German government would have to pay him reparations. It finally came last week. Now 72, Princz spent 38 months in Nazi death camps, and his family was killed, but as a U.S. citizen he was ineligible for compensation. Bonn agreed to pay him and 10 other Holocaust survivors a total of $2.1 million.

ADVERTISING ABRACADABRA

IT'S JUST THE WARRIOR IN ME

A tourism firm in New Zealand got more than it bargained for when it put IAN BRACKENBURY CHANNELL in an ad campaign. A Christchurch institution for years, "the Wizard,'' as he is known, appears regularly in the city's main square sounding forth on everything from politics to post-feminist men. But when his face popped up on posters and in newspapers--without permission and without his receiving a penny--the 63-year-old Wizard cast a spell on the company. ("Only the suits,'' he says, "not the workers.'') If magic fails--he'll consider a lawsuit. Such toil and trouble.

What's a nice chap like CARY-HIROYUKI TAGAWA doing as the evil sorcerer in the hit film Mortal Kombat? Being cast as a villain doesn't bother the Japanese-American actor, who's not so menacing off the set. "I have the ability to look like I can scare people,'' he admits, "but when I play a good guy, I'll bring to that the same intensity.'' Tagawa, 45, whose father was a career soldier in the U.S. Army, says he has a "warrior spirit.'' Someday, he vows, he'll play a new kind of hero who chooses violence only as a last resort.