Charleston lawyer, Rob Turkewitz and College of Charleston religious studies professor, Dr. Elijah Siegler researched the story of Rabbi Gustavus Poznanski and how the installation of the organ at Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim (KKBE) led to one of the first appellate decisions on the separation of church and state and the birth of the Jewish reform movement, and realized it was a story that needed to be told, especially in our current climate.

In early 2024, wanting to make the show a reality, Rob and Elijah reached out to friend, artist, and fellow Charleston resident Robin Shuler, who recommended they engage Brooklyn composer and playwright Toby Singer to create the piece.

Toby, who had spent two formative early-career years as the music director of KKBE, couldn’t resist the opportunity to tackle such a rich and complex story in a place that he still felt a strong draw towards.

Happyland had a Zoom reading in early 2025, and then was workshopped in May 2025 at the legendary Porgy house on Folly Beach where the Gershwins wrote Porgy & Bess. Happyland had a second reading in Brooklyn that fall. Now, this homegrown Charleston story will be first witnessed by audiences in the very location that it all takes place: the sanctuary of Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim.

Happyland is a sweeping new musical set in Charleston, South Carolina, in the decades leading up to the Civil War, inspired by true events surrounding Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim, the birthplace of Reform Judaism in America.

At its center is Rabbi Gustavus Poznanski, a young Polish immigrant rabbi who arrives in Charleston seeking stability, belonging, and a permanent home. Charismatic and idealistic, Poznanski quickly becomes beloved by his congregation—and marries into one of Charleston’s oldest Jewish families.

But Charleston in the 1830s and 1840s is a paradox: a city of refinement, tolerance, and opportunity for Jews, built atop the brutal machinery of American slavery.

As Poznanski settles into family life and secures a lifetime contract, the synagogue becomes divided over whether to modernize its religious practices—specifically, whether to install a pipe organ, a radical act that would signal a distinctly American Judaism.

What begins as a theological debate becomes something much larger: a test of how far a community is willing to evolve, and how much moral compromise it is willing to tolerate in order to belong.

Happyland speaks directly to our current moment of moral reckoning. Across religious, cultural, and civic institutions today, we are confronting urgent questions:

• What does progress actually mean?

• When does assimilation become complicity?

• What do we owe to justice when our safety, status, or belonging is at stake?

At a time when democratic norms are under strain, historical truths are contested, and communities are being asked to choose sides, Happyland insists on complexity rather than certainty. It refuses easy heroes and instead examines how oppression is often sustained not by hatred—but by fear, comfort, and incremental compromise.

By looking backward with precision and empathy, Happyland offers a mirror to audiences, asking not “What would I have done then?” but “What am I doing now?”

Charleston is not just the setting of Happyland—it is the subject.

Happyland tells a Charleston story that has never really been told onstage before. It’s about one of the city’s earliest Jewish communities—people who helped build Charleston culturally and economically—at a moment when the city was defining who it wanted to be.

Charleston was one of the most religiously tolerant cities in early America, home to the largest Jewish community in the country from the 1700s to the early 1800s, and simultaneously one of the wealthiest slave ports in the nation. This contradiction is not incidental; it is the heart of the story.

By rooting Happyland in Charleston, the project honors the city’s complexity while asking us to reckon honestly with what it means to call a place “home.”