Ok wel my school is doing FoTR this year for our annual Spring Musical. And i just wanted to know how large of a cast you need, because i honestly dont think we have enough people.
We have around 33 people only 5 of which are guys. Do you think we can pull it off?

Your only chance is if you have some tall, butch-looking altos who could be almost all of the sons and a few papas. You really need to be able to recreate a whole village for this show.

Cast of 33 shouldn't be a problem. There are a lot of small roles that can be doubled. For example, when I did the show, I was Fruma Sarah, Woman #1 in the Rumor song, and a "Mama" (the Inkeeper's wife) in the rest of the show.

Only 5 males, though? That could be a big problem. You're going to have to have a lot of girls playing guys.

Hmmm....this sounds awfully familiar, I wonder why.

I'll let you know in a couple months if it could work.

lol well it better, im pretty sure we already ordered the rights!

Another unrelated question about cast size- what do you think is the SMALLEST cast you could get away with? The pro/regional theater I'm working with now is doing this as their big summer musical next year. I'm not sure if I would be able to be in it or not, depending on my job situation, but I'd like to audition. I'd hope now that I worked there I'd have a better chance at getting cast again.

But they usually do really small cast size shows, like Cinderella with 12 people, Jekyll and Hyde with 14 people...
I'm sure they'd cast equity in all the 'good'/major roles so I'm not sure where that would leave me for auditioning. If they're going to go with their small cast trend, I don't know how many people can be in the 'chorus'. How many/what roles could be doubled for the smallest cast size possible? It's been a while since I was in the show, I can't remember who's in what scene.
Whaddya think?

It's been a while since I worked on Fiddler, but I'll try answering your query the best I can.

The cast size was roughly 25-30. At least several of the males doubled as Russians. One of the actresses doubled as a villager and as Grandma T., another doubled as Motel's mother as well as a villager. The chorus was, I believe, at least 10 to 15 people. Like I said, it's been a while, so my numbers are probably off.


As for the original question - I've seen Fiddler down with girls in male roles (mostly Russians). Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It concersn me that there's only have five guys, that's barely enough tocover most of the male roles needed (Tevye, Lazar, Rabbi, Motel, Mendel, Avram, etc) I guess it's worth a shot but if more guys can't be found, perhaps it's best to choose another show.

Fruma-Sarah is often cast from the chorus (ensemble if anyone prefers), as far back as Carol Sawyer in the OBC. I once saw an all-girl Fiddler put on by a girls' school, it was well done. Tevye lost "his" cool at the Constable at the end, shouting at "him": "Get off my land!" That kind of spoiled it; I much prefer Topol's deadly calm in uttering that line to Louis Zorich's Constable.

Having Grandma and Fruma be in the chorus works very well. It gives them something to do for the other two hours and twenty minutes of the show that they AREN'T playing the featured roles, and often it helps to have a couple of extra mamas (or, in the case of my production, Grandma Tzietel was played by a taller woman who doubled as a son in the chorus for the rest of the show...bearded and dressed as a man, she was quite inconspicuous, which was great...you don't want people to spend "Sunrise, Sunset" recognizing the two chorus members who played ghosts).

Speaking of which, if you need to cast women in any of the male roles, the best place for them is as some of the sons. Most of the Papas are featured roles, and that's going to be obvious. It would be easier to blend in as the non-featured sons...and their generally slighter frames and lighter voices (even singing the part an octave lower, they still won't truly sound male) would make more sense as adolescents than as forty-year-olds. And if you put them as Mamas, it's usually pretty obvious. I wouldn't think either is usually quite young enough to be a daughter, though Fruma could conceiveably be in her twenties.

Can you tell I've sat through way too many high school productions with svelte, cute little sopranos wearing bad stick-on beards trying to play Tevye's drinking buddies? lol

When I was Fruma Sarah I was a villager as well (I sang in "The Rumor" and I was a random woman in town). Ditto for our Grandma.