After hearing about Version for the past year, I thought I would attend one of their meetings about this year's fest. Since I have failed to submit a proposal by their Feb. 28th deadline, I thought I might be able to contribute as a volunteer. Hence, this past Saturday I went to the Irons St. Building. Not looking it up on the map, and having an obscure idea of its location, I traveled from Pilsen to Bridgeport by cta. I got off at Irons St and 35th St, a rather obscure place surrounded by a bunch of warehouses (a Pepsi building covers half of the 35th street towards Ashland!), empty lots, and no one in sight. Well, instead of giving up, I decided to walk around, and examine whether I reached the right location. To my surprise, I did! It is located in a warehouse along Irons St., not the easiest place to get to, and creepy at night (should have taken my bike, but than again it rained later on).
As I got to the place, there were already other interested souls waiting for the meeting to begin. After about 30 minutes of waiting for them to get organized, some of the coordinators finally walked us through the space for the fest, which covers several floors of the buiding. Now I know why their location is there. The space is massive. They went over a very tentative schedule, and talked about ideas for the show. Although, they seemed a bit disorganized, with their leader, edmar, missing, guns was leading the meeting. I was very excited about going to the meeting, but a little taken aback as I assumed that everything was already set, and they would just talk about the schedule and what they needed volunteers for. However, since everything is tentative everyone there had a chance to propose an idea, and implement it within the schedule, or coordinate it to fit in with the fest.
Also, they are broke, so they do need money and freebies if possible - i.e., Xeroxing, printing posters, and those with possible free access to Xerox machines would be of great assistance. Overall, it was great to see who are the people behind this event, and although they seemed very artsy fartsy, and at times pretentious with their assumed new names, they are coordinating a great series of events that will occur over the course of 3 weeks in April and May.
Version runs from April 20 - May 6. I will post the tentative schedule when i scan it.