WILLiFEST 2010

The KFB Meeting

I arrived at the Knitting Factory's unrenovated Brooklyn location on a frigid winter day in January 2009, thinking I'd be walking out of there with a commitment from the management to premiere WILLiFEST at their new Brooklyn location in September 2009. With only nine months to produce the festival, I worried how I'd pull it all together so quickly, but my anxiety quickly turned to excitement when my meeting with the Knitting Factory's talent booker was interrupted by the VP of Knitting Factory Brooklyn. He liked what he'd seen on the WILLiFEST website I had created and wanted to know more. I spent the next hour or so describing my vision for WILLiFEST at the Knitting Factory and in Williamsburg, and they said they loved it. They told me that WILLiFEST was exactly the type of event that the Knitting Factory should be hosting when it opened it's new Brooklyn location. I again wondered how I'd throw this all together by the time the Knitting Factory opened its doors in Williamsburg, but before I could ask them what dates in September worked for them, they told me they'd think about it and that I should contact them in mid September 2009 when the Brooklyn location was slated to open. 

In a matter of seconds, they went from loving the concept to having to think about it. The hope of opening the festival in 2009 was officially dead, but the creation of WILLiFEST had only just begun.