Alumni Feature: Sean Mahoney ‘91

By IZYAAN BURNEY, MEGHAN TATE ZEE, AND CHENGYUE ZHANG

On Oct. 4th, 2023, the musical Factory Girls, written by Academy alumnus Sean Mahoney ‘91, had its full-fledged debut in the United States at the Johnson Theater of the University of New Hampshire, a twenty-minute drive north of Exeter.

S. Mahoney and his friend Creighton Irons co-wrote Factory Girls in 2008 as a thesis project in a graduate musical theater writing program at New York University’s Tisch School for Musical Theatre. The show focuses on the Lowell Mill Girls, a group of young female textile factory workers in Lowell, Massachusetts, during the eighteenth-century Industrial Revolution.

S. Mahoney was raised in North Conway, New Hampshire, and attended Phillips Exeter Academy with his fraternal twin brother Jim Mahoney ‘91. During his time at Exeter, S. Mahoney was the director of WPEA, a member of a rock band, and a varsity athlete in football and lacrosse.

At Exeter, S. Mahoney was challenged academically, but he also appreciated the skills he learned through experiences at the Harkness table. “[The Harkness system] taught me to ask good questions in life… you could learn a lot from the social setting of the classroom as opposed to lectures and getting spoken to,” S. Mahoney said.

Additionally, S. Mahoney mentioned how the skill of conducting research with primary sources, which he learned through writing history essays in his upper year, helped him in the creation of Factory Girls. “When we started investigating the Lowell Mill girls, we found this trove of material. They wrote their own publication called the Lowell Offering, and we even transcribed almost directly some of their poems and lyrics into songs,” S. Mahoney explained.

Although not directly involved in theater at Exeter, S. Mahoney was a guitarist. He played in a rock band and was inspired by the many musicians he got to meet and interact with in his high school years. “In the years around my class, there were a bunch of phenomenal musicians who were a huge influence on me and stuck through my musical theater career,” S. Mahoney said. “They were who we saw at assemblies. Even though I write a lot of historical stuff, [the music] is always rock-based.”

S. Mahoney was appreciative of the many good friends he made at Exeter, especially through music. “When I committed to musical theater, [my Exeter friends] were the first people to support me, having known me since I was out on the lawn, leaving my guitar out overnight,” Mahoney continued.

J. Mahoney mentioned his brother’s incredible talent on guitar: “[My brother] performed his senior meditation in the Phillips Church…He organized and composed the whole thing. It wasn’t all original music, but anyone who was in that room then or saw him play would’ve said he’s so talented.”

“He would just sit on the academy lawn with his guitar, and people would just roam, and he would start making up songs about them. On WPEA, he would bring his guitar in and just play and do songs about our friends and make fun of them,” J. Mahoney continued.

The state of New Hampshire as a state appeared in the musical as well. One of  S. Mahoney’s favorite moments in the show is when a girl sings a song titled “Live Free or Die,” the state motto of New Hampshire. “These girls said we would rather have a chance to go work in the mills than stay at home on our farms and get married off to the boy down the road,” S. Mahoney said. “This was a chance to do something different to make their own money and make their own lives.”

Theater instructor Lauren Josef, who attended the show’s debut at UNH in person, enjoyed it greatly and highlighted the local connection as well.“It was really exciting to see a show with somebody who I am acquainted with,” Josef said. “The factory mills are actually in the northeast and we could drive to these mills. It was exciting to hear a story told in the place where it [really] happened.”

The musical was discovered by a production company from Tokyo and was subsequently taken on two very successful tours in Japan, receiving the Yama Yuri Award for Best New Musical in Japan in 2019. S. Mahoney recalled that “[the production company] liked the musical’s American music because it’s rock country, hip hop, funk, and soul.” 

Though the music’s style was American, the lyrics were translated into Japanese and Factory Girls’ theme resonated with the Japanese audience. “The production company helped us adapt a version for Japan,” S. Mahoney said. “We added eight songs that aren’t in the American version… and a different ending of act one... because they had ideas about how to tell the story and things they wanted.” Additional information about the cast and differences in plot can be found on their website musical-fg.com. 

S. Mahoney combined historical elements with various genres of modern music while creating the production. “Even though [the musical is] set in the 1840s, it’s modern musically,” he said, “the musical oscillates between these references like Led Zeppelin to Taylor Swift. It’s a real swing between this folky stuff from before industrialization and [more modern things] like electric guitars.”

J. Mahoney highlighted S. Mahoney’s talent for capturing a range of human emotions, saying, “He deals with big ideas that have to do with identity but also incorporates humor. He really does hear the sound of people. He can make music and compose music that seems to convey authentic human emotion, which runs the range of humor and comedy, joy and laughter and love, as well as tragedy and oppression.”

Currently, S. Mahoney is working on making Factory Girls an accessible show throughout the nation. “We’re working on Factory Girls to provide a version that people could license in the U.S., a version that a school like Exeter could [perform] in the future that has a lot of media roles and hooky songs with a connection to the area,” he said.

In addition, S. Mahoney is working on a number of novel shows in the historical realm. “I’m working on a show about Bush Cassidy who robbed his first bank here in Telluride, Colorado, where I live,” he shared, “a show called Prep School Musical about the boarding school experience, and another one called Ski Gods about the history of North Conway, New Hampshire, where I’m from.”