A cheery gaggle of actors weaved through historic grave markers at the Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim (KKBE) Coming Street Cemetery on a recent sunny April afternoon. They were led by docent Anita Moise Rosenberg.
“There are many different styles here. Everybody’s six feet under,” explained the docent. Well-worn notebook in hand, she nimbly navigated one cluster of gravestones to the next, pointing out stone varieties. The players were all ears, eager to catch the name of a character or fresh tidbit of the story that joined them.
The cause of the graveyard confab was Happyland, a new work of musical theater centers on 19th-century KKBE congregants who were among those six feet under. Many who inspired the musical found their final resting place in that selfsame sacred ground, including Esther G. “Hetty” Barrett, wife of KKBE’s first rabbi, Gustavus Poznanski, who was not buried there.
Happyland is well underway for a site-specific developmental production taking place in the sanctuary of KKBE from June 4 to June 14.
Since the date falls at a time when the city is fixed on its annual festivals, Charleston City Paper caught up with the artistic team this month while it was in full creative flex.
Getting to Happyland
It’s been a long road to Happyland. Starting around 15 years ago, the work was first conceived by Charleston attorney Robert Turkewitz and College of Charleston religious studies professor Elijah Siegler, who kicked around on weekends to noodle it out.
Then titled POZNANSKI! The Musical, this passion project was based on the antebellum life and trials of Rabbi Gustavus Poznanski, a young immigrant and the spiritual leader of KKBE, Charleston’s first synagogue.
It’s no great leap to glean why Turkewitz was drawn to the story. His track record of complex civil litigation packs a wallop with its high-profile cases, including the recent one involving Boeing and its former employee John Barnett.
The attorney has long been fascinated by an 1846 historic lawsuit in the South Carolina Court of Appeals involving two KKBE factions of congregants, the traditionalists and the reformers, who came to legal loggerheads over the installation of an organ into the sanctuary initiated by the young rabbi.
For Turkewitz and Siegler, it was an artistic stretch, a departure from their chosen vocations to focus instead on a story mining the moral contradictions they found in belonging and assimilation — and then aiming to make it into a full-scale musical.
“The heart of the story is how an immigrant can come to America and feel like he’s a part of it, and especially a Jewish person who grew up in Poland and went to school in Germany, and comes here and felt like this is our home, this is our promised land,” Turkewitz said.
In January 2024, they contacted Robin Shuler, retired music director of KKBE, hoping for a spot in KKBE’s 275th yearlong celebration, which then shifted to 2026.
“It started very collaboratively,” Shuler said, explaining how she then connected them with Toby Singer, a Brooklyn-based playwright and composer and KKBE’s former director of Koleinu, who created Happyland’s book, music and lyrics, then tapped seasoned director Linda Eisen.
Shuler serves as dramaturg, a theatrical role that bridges the gap between a script and the production of it, while also providing production assistance and a link to KKBE and community members. Turkewitz and Siegler are co-producers.
At an April 23 music rehearsal at the College of Charleston’s Sylvia Vlosky Yaschik Jewish Studies Center, Singer sits at a keyboard before a semi-circle of locally cast actors, gently instructing them.
“We can pick up a little bit more there, but take your time,” he offered, in an assuring voice. Later, as they switched seats to perform a new number, he playfully tickled a musical chairs tune then quipped, “OK, now back to third-generation trauma.”
As a composer and musician, Singer has already demonstrated his mettle. His works have been produced off-Broadway and regionally, garnering coverage in The New York Times and New York Magazine.
From time to time, Eisen slipped in to pull a cast member from the grouping, directing them to the college’s costume department for a fitting, with Singer adjusting the rehearsal sequence accordingly.
From the first stanza of the poignantly titled “A Thousand Generations,” the score soars.
No standing apart, now we stand together.
One hand, one heart, through the shifting weather.
Wearing our clothes and our customs, birds of the same feather.
We may be chosen but here things are better.
A Charleston story
While Happyland homes in on a singular, seminal American court case originating in Charleston at KKBE, the work also illuminates paradoxes playing out in 19th-century Charleston. While the city was among the most religiously tolerant in the country with the largest Jewish community, in the musical inspired by the story, Poznanski also grappled with his wife Hetty’s expectation that they would inherit and own slaves, common practice in the wealthy slave port.
Eisen noted “the cognitive dissonance of the Jews sitting down at a Seder table and saying we were free from slavery while they had slaves” evolved into a main throughline of the story, crediting Singer for his compositional pivots as the story emerged.
Now, they are well on their way to their intended destination, Happyland.
IF YOU WANT TO GO: Tickets for the limited six-show run (June 4 to June 14, 2026) are expected to sell quickly, and will take place at KKBE, 90 Hasell St. For tickets and information,
visit happylandmusical.com.
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