Black Cat Theatre is back with their third Staged Reading+ and is thrilled to present the Chicago premiere of Hope Springs Internal by Eleanor Evans-Wickberg, taking place April 1st and April 7th, 2025.

ABOUT THE SHOW: It’s 2008 and Charlotte, a self-proclaimed “performance artist” is about to get her big break at the Chicago Middle School Arts Festival. Unfortunately for Charlotte, her Mom and her two sisters—Darcy, an ex-ballerina, and Amelia, a precocious violin “prodigy”—just don’t understand her. If only her Dad, who’s busy helping Obama get elected, would show up and rescue her… Part family drama, part wacky comedy, and part coming-of-age story, Hope Springs Internal is an angst-filled journey into girlhood, politics, and what it means to be an artist.

ABOUT OUR TICKET PRICES: Financial transparency is one of BCT's core values. As such, we share our show budget with the public to highlight why we chose certain ticket prices -- and offer tiers of pricing so our productions can be accessible to all.

For this production, our total budget is $1,700, broken down as follows:

$800 - artist stipends

$740 - space rental costs

$100 - photography

$60 - materials

Based on this budget, our tiers of ticket pricing are:

ACCESS TICKETS- $15

TRUE-COST TICKETS -- $21.25. This is set by dividing the total budget by the total number of seats available over both performances (80).

SPONSOR TICKETS -- $27.50. This is set by adding the cost difference between Access and True-Cost ($6.25) to the True-Cost ticket price.