CLAIMING THE CAT’S EYE AND OTHER STORIES
This revelation alone would be justification for Chicago writer Barbara Kensey’s story “Claiming the Cat’s Eye.” The program of one-act plays based on this and two more of Kensey’s short stories (produced by City Lit Theater Company’s Collective of African-American Artists) contains not only such startling reminders as this but poetry of a caressing beauty, as well as one of the gentlest invitations to understanding of the black experience you’ll find extended during this Black History Month.
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Black History Month traditionally brings out a parade of sweeping productions–pageants celebrating the race’s contributions to humankind, epics tracing the long struggle to the present, and problem plays warning of the distance yet to be traveled. “Claiming the Cat’s Eye and Other Stories,” however, offers a microcosmic view, small and transparent as the glass marble of its title–a lens through which we can see a whole universe open out before us.
