QBP - About Queen Bee Productions

About Queen Bee Productions

The fact that most of society pays only lip service to the importance of women was something I had grown up with. It had affected me and other women I knew, but we made subtle adjustments- compromises. With the birth of my daughter in 1997 my universe was changed.

Questions overwhelmed me. How will I teach my daughter to know her power and her beauty? Why is the importance of women throughout history just a footnote in our history books? How can I encourage changes that will make the world a better, more balanced place?

Shortly after she was born, I was hired to direct the play Mother Wove the Morning. Sixteen women from history, 20,000 bce to the present, come to the stage to challenge us with the question "what happened to the female face of God and by losing it, have we lost the ability to see women as valuable and worthy."

By the time we reached opening night, I knew I was to go out on my own and bring Mother Wove the Morning to as many people as possible. Queen Bee Productions was born.

In 2000 we added the play, Beyond the Pink Zone, with characters that reflect real women's lives as they stepped out from the unreal world held in a bright pink doll box.

In 2001 we were granted the opportunity to participate in V-Day a worldwide campaign to stop violence against women and girls. Queen Bee Productions joined organizations around the world from 2001 through 2004, to produce V-Day Akron including a local benefit performance of The Vagina Monologues. V-Day Akron has raised nearly $50,000 for our local rape crisis programs and V-Day Spotlight initiatives, and received a 2002 Community Collaborations Award from the Summit County Housing Network.

2001 also brought back one of our favorites, the outrageous and hilarious Parallel Lives: The Kathy and Mo Show. Comedy has the power to transform us as we play witness to ourselves.

Queen Bee Productions uses theatre and other creative programming to advocate for women. With the march on Washington DC in April of 2004, QBP was excited to bring Cindy Cooper's pro-choice theatre piece, Words of Choice, to organizations promoting the march.

Through our work, we have had many occasions to hear and share women's stories. Often these stories speak to the cultural obsession with body image, weight and fat phobia. Women find themselves trapped in the cultural conditioning that dictates that we measure our worth by the size and shape of our bodies. QBP in collaboration with different organizations has developed Workshops and Talks that explore this body image conditioning. Recognizing QBP's work in this area, The Massachusetts Eating Disorder Association in Boston invited me to present Fat and Happy at their 2004 conference. I was then invited back for 2005 as the keynote speaker to create and present an original performance piece developed specifically for the conference, entitled For Beauty's Sake.

We look forward to bringing QBP programs to your organization or community. Whether it is something small to spice up a fundraiser or a workshop for a local organization or a full scale production, we enjoy bringing challenging material to the stage and taking the sting out of the queen bee syndrome!

Deb Lemire holds a BFA in Musical Theatre from Kent State University. She has worked professionally for over 30 years. Recently Deb was honored with a Woman of the Year Creativity Award from the Women's History Project of Akron, Feminist of the Year 2002 by the Akron Chapter of the National Organization for Women and listed as one of Northeast Ohio's most influential women in Northern Ohio Live Magazine.

For more background on the beginnings of QBP read Deb Lemire's Grateful for the Privilege.