The Writers Bloc in 2005: A Review

NOTE: People who know me well—or who regularly visit this blog—know how devoted I am to The Writers Bloc, the subject of this post. You have the option to skip this should you feel like it. Ü


2005 has been a good year for The Writers Bloc.

We kicked off the year with the soft launching of our first book, 10 X 10 X 10: Sampung Tigsasampung Minutong Dula ng Sampung Mandudula (published by the UST Publishing House, priced at P210.00—buy now!) at the Conspiracy Café last January. To say it was successful is an understatement: the attendees had a blast as some of the country’s finest theater actors stage-read selected plays from the book. The result? All the books I brought were sold out.

Then there was The Virgin Labfest last June. Eight unproduced plays, most of them penned by Bloc members, finally saw the (stage)light of day at the CCP, thanks to Herbie Go and Tanghalang Pilipino. That, too, was successful, thanks in great part to the strength of each of the featured plays—and lowered ticket prices. It was so successful that Dennis Teodosio’s Geegee at Waterina, arguably the festival’s best play, will be staged again, together with Chris Martinez’s Palanca-winning Welcome to Intelstar, by Tanghalang Pilipino next month as part of its regular season.

The second half of the year turned out to be even better. We had the Bloc formalized by registering at the SEC last August. Then in September, a record-setting six Bloc members—Rody Vera, Elmer Gatchalian, Chris Martinez, Vincent de Jesus, Allan Lopez and myself—won at this year’s Palancas. 10 X 10 X 10’s formal launch at the UST was also a highlight, but that took so looong to finish, with the mostly indulgent and interminable speeches of the 40-plus authors and all.

Also: some school-based theater groups started performing a number of the 10 X 10 X 10 plays around this time—and paying royalties for using them. The fact they used them attest to how fresh and student-friendly the book is. UP Los Baños first staged them last September, followed by the College of St. Benilde in October and St. Paul University-Quezon City (with the help of three other schools) in November. Of course there are those other schools that also used the plays, but I won’t go there. On another matter, also around this time, our BIR papers have finally been processed.



We celebrated all these, and more, when we had our Christmas party last Sunday (see the picture above). All of us agreed that we had so much to be grateful for and to look forward to. Among them: another Virgin Labfest come July, and hopefully more Bloc publications.

Now if 2005 wasn’t a good year for us, then I don’t know what is. Ü