Isabella Dawis has snagged two major musical theater prizes in recent months, a feat she attributes to being a theater-loving kid in Minneapolis.
"I remember seeing young children in the casts and that always had a big impact on me. I would notice, especially, when there were young actors of color on stage. Their presence seemed like an invitation to me to come play," the 29-year-old actor/musician/writer said.
She was named a co-recipient of the $60,000 Fred Ebb Award in November for song-writing (a lyricist, Dawis won with her collaborator, composer Tidtaya Sinutoke). Last month, she won the $100,000 Kleban Prize for libretto writing.
A production in 2000 changed things for Dawis — Guthrie Theater's "A Christmas Carol."
"It was a diverse cast. That really stood out," said Dawis, who is Filipino-American. She also fell in love with the Guthrie's thrust stage, which she likens to a campfire around which the audience gathers, aware of one another and of the action on stage.
The budding actor began auditioning. On her third attempt — at tryouts for the 2001 "Christmas Carol" — she landed a part. Soon, she was racking up credits at Stages, Children's Theatre Company and Chanhassen Dinner Theatres, where she played the title role of "Annie" in 2004.
Dawis — the daughter of Joe and Laura Dawis and big sister of performer Francesca — attended Southwest High School and earned a degree in piano performance from the University of Minnesota, all while appearing on local stages. What many didn't know was that she was creating stories and plays, too.
"I would write in grade school and high school, under my desk, during class," said Dawis. "I didn't think I was going to be a lyricist or librettist. I thought I would be a novelist."
An experience at Theater Mu in 2005 brought new awareness. Dawis played another orphan named Annie in "The Walleye Kid," a world premiere that offered an immersive look at how a musical comes together, with composers eliminating and adding songs while characters gradually took shape.
"That really made me aware of what it's like to create something, with the blueprint constantly changing," said Dawis, who will receive the Kleban award at a Feb. 21 ceremony streamed for free at Broadway on Demand.
The award nods to how Dawis is helping change the form, according to Kleban Foundation president Richard Maltby Jr., a Tony Award-winning director/writer.
"You hear it almost immediately with her work. The moment it starts you know you're in a special place. One doesn't know what she will do next," said Maltby, noting that unlike most awards, the Kleban is based not on a body of work but on potential.
Dawis and Sinutoke's musicals are "Half the Sky," which charts an Asian-American woman's journey up Mount Everest, and the in-the-works "Sunwatcher," inspired by a Japanese myth. Their originality is what puts Dawis in the company of former Kleban awardees Robert Lopez, who went on to win two Oscars, and Tony Award winner Jason Robert Brown.
"We're in the business of expanding the number of wonderful shows out there," Maltby said. "Isabella doesn't stick to standard musical comedy forms. That's where I think theater is going — much more magical. Even a show like 'Hamilton' seems vividly obvious now, but its theatrical style would be shocking to Rodgers and Hammerstein."
Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, of course, were once thought revolutionary for creating musicals about racism ("South Pacific") and murder ("Oklahoma"). Those works were adapted from popular literature but Dawis prefers little-known subjects.
"There's this idea of 'write what you know,' which is kind of undeniably true but I don't really follow that. I gravitate toward topics I'm not an expert on," Dawis said.
In fact, she loves getting lost in research, in much the same way she enjoyed getting lost in "A Christmas Carol" when she was a kid.
