[born4thestage]

i was wondering what the ages are for the girls. i've looked but can't find somewhere that says them. i'm guessing they aren't too exact from what i read, but if you could tell me the names of the characters and the character's ages it would b much appreciated. thanks

[Radames's_Angel]

I believe it's 19, 17, 15, 13 and 11, or maybe 18, 16, 14, 12 and 10... I just remember it's 2 years between each girl, and Tzeitel is close to 20, but not there yet...

[Beagle On Stage]

There may be actual ages in the source material, but they are never identified for sure in the show. We do know that Tsietel is "not yet twenty," which makes her probably eighteen or nineteen. Going from there, Hodel is probably seventeen, Chava is probably fourteen or fifteen, and while Sphrintse gets old enough to marry in the stories, both she and Bielke are pre-teens or younger in the show.

No doubt the reason the daughters don't have concrete ages is to make them easier to cast. The older three are often played by actresses in their twenties. It's easy to accept a twenty-two year old as vageuly teenaged, but if Chava were to actually say, "I am fourteen years old," that would call attention to it and would mean she has to actually sell fourteen, which limits your casting options a lot more than if she just has to pull off being somewhere in her teens. Tsietel's line about being almost twenty identifies the sisters as young brides, which is all we need, and most audience members won't think to try figuring out exactly how old that makes each one.