Ed Monk (in center, with envelope) and his students after last year’s VHSL state theater championship. Photo Contributed
It’s the end of an era; Chantilly High Theater Director Ed Monk is retiring. He’s bringing down the curtain on his career here after 31 years with Fairfax County Public Schools — 26 of them at Chantilly.
And before teaching there, he was a student at the school, graduating in 1978. He and his brother John were there when Chantilly opened in 1973 as a secondary school. Monk, now 55, was in eighth grade and his brother was in seventh.
“There was a cornfield across the street and a big barn with the words, ‘Chantilly Farm,’” he said. “Route 50 had one stoplight between I-66 and Middleburg, and Fair Oaks Mall was a golf course. There were no computers or cell phones, and kids used the library, encyclopedias and pay phones.”
Monk took drama at Chantilly under legendary theater teacher Elaine Wilson — an adjective that he’s earned as well — and then majored in history at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. In his senior year, he decided he wanted to teach, so he took education classes at GMU to become certified.
In March 1985, he began teaching history at Thoreau Middle School in Vienna for five years. He also started doing writing and directing plays for St. Timothy Catholic Church’s youth group. Wilson, still at Chantilly, knew about it because they shared some of the same actors and they’d kept in touch.
Then in 1990, FCPS went from six to seven school periods so students could take another elective. As a result, said Monk, “Elaine’s theater program doubled in a year. So she asked if I wanted to teach theater at Chantilly.” He began that year.
“Elaine taught me and then I gradually took over things,” he said. “She retired, the end of ’98; but by then, we already shared teaching the upper-level classes. I loved teaching, and teaching high-school kids was wonderful. Chantilly is a place where teachers tend to stay because it’s such a good school — with a balance between academics, athletics and the arts — or they become principals.”
Through the years, Monk put on about 90 plays and 26 holiday spectaculars. “I always enjoyed it,” he said. “Some of our most memorable shows were ‘Room Service,’ a comedy with a great group of kids, and ‘Booby Trap,’ the first drama I wrote. And winning the State VHSL Championship three times was fun, including last year for ‘Day Six.’”
He and his students always had a good time, he said. “In 26 years, there were only 10 days I didn’t want to go to work,” said Monk. “The rest of the time, it’s been a ball. Every year’s had wonderful times, amazing kids, hilarious things and moments that surprised me.”
He’s also enjoyed working with Chantilly’s other theater director, Shannon Khatcheressian, plus former director, Gael Reilly. And, added Monk, “Because of Gael, who lives in Romania, I got to go to the American International School in Bucharest twice to teach a play I wrote.”
He’s become quite a successful playwright. He writes mainly comedies and children’s shows and just had his 19th play published. “I even made money from them, which I never set out to do,” said Monk, who’s always been modest and low-key about his own accomplishments. “I just wanted to get a lot of kids involved in theater, so I wrote a lot of one-acts with several characters.”
Some of his most hilarious children’s plays are “Cucumber Phil,” “The Kid Who Talked to Penguins,” “Goldilocks on Trial,” Aliens in My Closet,” “Cinderella and the Substitute Fairy Godmother” and “Bedtime Stories (As Told by Our Dad Who Messed Them Up).”
Eventually, other schools started performing his plays at theater festivals, and Playscripts Inc. took notice. It called Monk and asked to publish them, which also surprised him. “That’s not the way it’s supposed to work,” he said. “You’re supposed to submit plays and get rejected.” But then, he said, his whole career has been that way.
“I took a total of four drama classes in school,” said Monk. “And I didn’t know anything about building sets when I came here; I learned on the job. So it’s just strange how everything worked out for me. Everything I’ve learned, I learned from Elaine Wilson. She wanted to get as many students on stage, or behind the scenes, as possible and still do quality work. That’s what we’ve tried to maintain, and I think we have.”
Every year, he and Khatcheressian have each helmed a big theater production and a children’s show. They’ve also both taught beginning, as well as advanced, theater students. In the Cappies program, Chantilly won Best Play twice, for “Room Service” and “The Man Who Came to Dinner” and won the first Critics Team award. And in 17 years, it was nominated 12 times for Best Play and 14 times for Best Set.
Monk relishes the fact that he’s gotten to wear jeans to work and hasn’t worn a tie in 26 years. But perhaps the best part of his job was having all four of his children — Marley, Eddie, Maggie and Kelsey – in his theater program.
“I drove them to school, and they were in all my classes and shows, all four years,” he said. “So I got to spend more time with them — and know all their friends — than most parents do. And my mom, Mary Monk, was the cafeteria manager when I came here as a teacher, and still is. So I’d take the kids to her office and she’d give them a treat.”
He also emphasized that he “never made them take theater; they wanted to. They grew up here with the Chantilly actors babysitting them and playing with them. Kelsey even knew when an actor dropped a line from one production to another. Marley is now a stage manager in [Washington], D.C., and Maggie is an actress in California.”
Toughest, said Monk, was having to disappoint students when posting a show’s cast list. “I’d have great, nice kids who tried hard, but didn’t get a part because there weren’t enough, or they just got a small part,” he said.
Most satisfying, he said, were his relationships with his students — “Watching them grow as actors and young adults and become really nice people. I still keep in touch with many of them. Most aren’t going to do this for a living; they do it because they love it. It’s a tight-knit community, they form friends for life and are always part of Chantilly Drama.”
Monk was also happy “being part of this school that I love and having a great faculty and administration that’s always supported us. This is Shannon’s 17th year here, and we’ve never had a cross word. It was the same with Elaine and Gael; it’s been a blessed place to work. We welcome anyone who wants to participate in theater in any way, and they can do other activities at the same time. And our parents support us and don’t try to take over the program.”
He said theater’s about “creating something that didn’t exist. You put it all together and try the best you can — and that carries over to anything you do in life. You should have fun doing it, laugh at yourself and just enjoy life.”
So why retire now? After 30 years, Monk’s reached the top of FCPS’s pay scale and will get no more raises. So he and wife Grace are moving to Pittsburgh to be near several relatives, plus Eddie and his wife, who are expecting their first child. So, said Monk, “This is a good time to go, and to leave while I still love the job.”
But he won’t be relaxing. His wife, a nurse, will teach childbirth and parenting classes there, like she does here. And he’ll either teach or do something else “to pay off our kids’ college loans, for the next 10 years. I didn’t plan on this job and it’s worked out, so it’ll be a leap of faith. But it’ll be exciting not knowing.”
Monk won’t miss getting up early, but he will miss “the kids, faculty and friends at Chantilly, and the challenges of new kids and new productions. The community’s been supportive of me and the program, and I thank them. But my retirement’s not real, yet. I guess, when I don’t come back here in September, it will be.”