A familiar name in the Dallas-Fort Worth theater community is branching out with her own company, and patrons across the pond will also get to experience the debut show.

Catherine D. DuBord, a SMU alum who has performed at practically every major theater in DFW, founded Belle Sauvage this year to "bring new and existing work championing women’s voices to the stage in Dallas and beyond."

The company's inaugural production is already set: a workshop of William Luce's The Last Flapper, adapted by DuBord and running June 1-11, 2023, at Theatre Too (the basement venue of Uptown's Theatre Three). Tickets are now on sale.

Update: On May 1, 2023, DuBord was announced as the 2023 Donald Fowler Theater Arts Memorial Fund grant recipient. The $5,000 seed grant was established to "help artists living in the Dallas Metroplex, furthering their completion of works of theater, including plays and musicals."

Originally produced by Houston's Alley Theatre in 1987, Luce's one-woman play is set in an insane asylum on the last day of Zelda Fitzgerald's tumultuous life. It recounts the Jazz Age icon's innocent rebellion as a Southern belle, her destructive marriage to the famous novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the mental disintegration of her later years.

DuBord herself will play Fitzgerald, with distinguished actor, director, and TCU professor of performance Lydia Mackey directing.

Two months later, Belle Sauvage is taking the production to Scotland's famous Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

DuBord will perform every day from August 4-19, 2023, Greenside at Riddles Court in The Clover Studio. If you'll happen to be in Scotland this summer, you can purchase tickets here.

"I am extremely passionate about telling a story that may be of an era but still rings true to a modern audience," says DuBord. "Zelda’s story has been glossed over in our history books. She was relegated to a supporting character in the narrative of F. Scott Fitzgerald. But there is so much more to her. I want to tell her story because it speaks to the human desire to be grounded and know who we are as an individual and not as a part of others."

"Furthermore, this show is relevant to the current moment because we are still wrestling with questions about a woman’s right to choose her own path, to say 'no' to those in power, and make choices regarding her own medical health," she says.