How do you turn the movement of the sun into musical theatre?

On this episode of NEW@NAMT, host Jean-Paul Yovanoff and co-host Skye Cone Ivey sit down with writer Isabella Dawis to talk about Sunwatcher, the new musical she created with composer Tidtaya Sinutoke—and one of eight musicals selected for NAMT’s 38th Annual Festival of New Musicals. Set in wartime Tokyo, the show tells the story of Japanese astronomer Hisako Koyama, whose decades of painstaking sunspot observations became an extraordinary contribution to solar science.

Isabella talks about why Koyama’s story demanded to be told, the importance of placing an Asian woman scientist at the center of an epic musical, and the radical power of simply paying attention. A self-taught astronomer, Koyama spent 40 years documenting the sun and produced more than 10,000 hand-drawn observations—work that would later place her among the most important sunspot observers in history.

The conversation also dives into the musical’s inventive score, built around electronic live looping and taiko drumming. As Isabella puts it, “our score loops because the sun does”: voices and musical phrases accumulate and repeat in patterns inspired by the sun’s own cycles, turning solar science into theatrical language.

Sunwatcher moves between 1940s Tokyo, the surface of the sun and the mythic world of the sun goddess Amaterasu, brought to life by an ensemble of five Asian women and a movement vocabulary inspired in part by Japanese Noh theatre. Isabella shares how history, mythology, science and representation all became part of the same theatrical world.

One woman looked at the sun every day—and changed how we understand it.

Sunwatcher
Book, Lyrics & Additional Music by Isabella Dawis
Music by Tidtaya Sinutoke

The musical has been developed through organizations including Musical Theatre Factory, Berkeley Rep’s The Ground Floor, Goodspeed Musicals, The Civilians, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater and others, and was named a finalist for both the Richard Rodgers Award and the O’Neill NMTC in 2025.

Learn more about the 38th Annual Festival of New Musicals, October 22–23, 2026 at New World Stages, at namt.org/festival.

Follow NAMT:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://linktr.ee/namtpics⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Follow Musical Theatre Radio:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/musicaltheatreradio/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

More about SUNWATCHER:

https://namt.org/musicals/sunwatcher/

Follow Isabella:

https://www.instagram.com/isabelladawis/