Carol Starre-Kmiecik: The Cleveland Actress Who Plays Famous American Women

The performances always begin the same way. The audience, primarily middle age and elderly women, sit good-naturedly, talking with neighbors and friends. An abrupt noise from the back of the room stops them. "Quiet, quiet," yells a loud woman with fiery red hair who is making her way to an area set up in front. "If there is one thing I cannot stand it is a lack of manners."
The brazen woman picks out a female audience member in the front row, commenting on how extremely surprised she is to be seeing another woman wearing pants. She looks at the performer, shocked, barely able to stifle her laughter.

The woman is Carol Starre-Kmiecik. The character is Dorothy Fuldheim, the first female broadcaster of television news.
Carol Starre-Kmiecik has been writing, performing, and producing her one-woman shows in the Cleveland area for over nine years. The name of her company, Famous American Women, allows her to travel to senior citizen's groups, women's groups, and schools, and tell the lives of women throughout history. She has performed Fuldheim over 1200 times and will soon be the voice on a book on CD, Dorothy Fuldheim: The Cleveland Years, due out this month.

Starre-Kmiecik has always known that acting was the best way to showcase her talent and personality. She began performing in plays at the age of 15, and the big theatre productions at her high school, Lourdes Academy, influenced her to join the Drama Club. Her drama teacher, Mary Rose Oakar, former U.S. Congresswoman, became aware of the energy the young woman brought to the stage and encouraged her to consider pursuing theatre after high school. She chose to attend Baldwin Wallace College and received a B.A. in Speech and Theatre.

After college, Starre-Kmiecik was stuck on what to do next. "There were not a lot of opportunities at that time for professional theatre in Cleveland, so I decided to move to Chicago," she said. While in Chicago, she starred in many stage productions and commercials while modeling on the side.

When she married Robert Kmiecik, another actor she had met in college, in 1981, she gave up acting. Instead, she took on the role of mother to her two girls, Sara and Grace. She wanted to spend time with her children and not spend all day at casting calls.

She was always interested in women in history who have made an impact on this nation. She would read countless biographies of America's most influential women. In 1996, she was asked to develop a 10 minute vignette for Cleveland's Bicentennial Celebration of Fuldheim, the first female broadcaster who read the news in Cleveland for 37 years. While researching the character, Starre-Kmiecik found so much information on the newscaster that she decided to turn Fuldheim's story into a longer one woman show.

Due to the popularity of her vignette, she began performing all over Cleveland. She quickly learned there was a great demand for women performers and soon developed other characters including Amelia Earhart, Clare Booth Luce, Clara Barton, and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. "This was an opportunity to still care for my children, go away for a short time, and still do theatre," she claimed.

Starre-Kmiecik became friends with Pat Mote, a retired teacher and Parma native, who wrote a biography on Fuldheim, The FIRST First Lady of Television News. She began selling them at her shows. The idea recently came to them to make a book on CD, with Starre-Kmiecik reading the text. The result is a shorter version of the book, focusing primarily on the time Fuldheim spent in Cleveland. The 3 disc set will be arriving in book stores, and of course, Famous American Women shows, in October.

The aim of the CD set is to reach an audience that they haven't yet been able to. Most audience members are elderly men and women, who remember watching Fuldheim on television every night. They would complain to the actress that they couldn't buy the book because their eyesight limited them from reading it. This is an opportunity for them to also hear Fuldheim's story.
Starre-Kmiecik has become widely known in the area for her ability to bring famous women like Dorothy Fuldheim back to life. She explains, "Dorothy was the only woman on TV in the nation. I hope that I help her become a part of history."

Robert Kmiecik, her husband, is very supportive of her career choice. "I admire her for using her education and talent and her own entrepreneurial spirit to do what she most loves doing as an occupation. She uses the arts not only to entertain but to teach about women and the role they played."

The actress will continue educating others of the importance of women. She says, "When I grew up, there were no women in the history books. We had no idea that they did anything; it was like they didn't exist. At least my job allows me to bring this history to people who wouldn't normally learn about it."

For more information on Starre-Kmiecik, call 216-226-3531 or check out her website at http://www.lkwdpl.org/lfiles/starre-kmiecik/.