The ageless actress Zdena Studenková (70) is an icon not only on the Slovak but also on the Czech scene. The editors met Zdenka at the 25th anniversary of the Kalich theater, where she performed. At that time, she played the role of Queen Gertrude, who was Hamlet’s mother, in the musical. “It was also great that the connection between the Czechs and Slovaks still worked, so it was actually a Czechoslovak occupation,” she mentioned.
He perceives today differently. “Well, I have the feeling that the people who play in musicals in the Czech Republic are already people who have decided to work in the Czech Republic and have left, and these guest singers, even considering the fact that they don’t know the highway nobody do. I’ll tell you the truth, if I had to commute now like I did back then, I went every month for that whole week to play shows, I wouldn’t do it anymore, the highway is simply something unpredictable. You never know what will happen and how many hours you will spend there. So, of course, it’s a little different,” she reflected on the current situation.
As she admitted, she no longer sings like she used to. “Actually, I had that period between my forties and my fifties when I sang, I did musicals mainly with Bednárik, but my partner Branko Kostka founded his fantastic a cappella Fragile exactly twenty years ago, and I actually stopped singing because of that, because I wouldn’t allow myself to. Because he has such phenomenal singers that he simply doesn’t,” Studenková praised her longtime partner.
“And besides, everything has its time. Where would you like a woman of my age to still sing? Those are really bright exceptions, and there are many… You can count on the fingers of your hands who can still sing at my age. It’s about fitness, and a person who wants to do a musical has to sing every day. That can’t be fooled. It’s a muscle and it has to work. I use it in the theater for theater performances, but as for singing, not really there anymore. Even that voice keeps going down. I could only play the old cat in Cats, but even that would have to be transposed an octave lower,” she explained.
However, despite her retirement age, she still did not give up playing. In addition to hosting in the theater, he has private production shows and is actively filming the popular series Dunaj, at your service. “The pension comes and goes every month, which is very nice. It’s another item in the family budget, but because I’m actually still shooting a lot and I still have five current shows, it’s not a pension.” she revealed at the end.
