APPROACHING ZANZIBAR
by Tina Howe
A vacationing family meets a boy in the Blue Ridge Mountains willing to take a group snapshot. He turns out to be a deaf-mute astrological visionary. High up in the Smokies, the menopausal mother of the family keeps hearing a baby crying out in the woods. After she leaves the tent, the audience hears it too. The family tumbles into its car outside a diner near Amarillo, Texas, and resumes squabbling, only this time father and daughter swap roles and accustomed dialogue, and so do mother and son. The elders squeak about needing a bathroom break....