Neri Film Screenplay Gets a Reading at Detroit Public Theatre
DETROIT, MI - Unlocking Desire written by Barbara Neri is a feature length, drama, mystery, LGBTQ+ art house film that tells the story of an institutionalized woman who believes she is Tennessee Williams’ iconic heroine Blanche DuBois and must unravel the tragic circumstances that brought her there. Unlocking Desire was originally a play written and produced by Barbara Neri in 2011 at the Boll Y Theater in Detroit. Neri wrote a screen adaptation of her play that went on to win the 2017 Marfa Film Festival. Neri is directing the film.
Like Alice Randall’s The Wind Done Gone (2001) and Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea (book
1966, film 2006) Unlocking Desire questions and transform a masterpiece: Tennessee
Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. To tell another story, a back story, a new story.
Homosexuality was censored from Elia Kazan and Tennessee Williams’ 1951 film version of
A Streetcar Named Desire by the production code office; and audiences who only see the film
have never known the whole story. Not only does Unlocking Desire transform, but it also
restores.
Unlocking Desire emerged from Barbara Neri’s research that was done on the streets of New Orleans and Detroit and in the Historic New Orleans Collection. Her wellspring of research was published in the 2018 Tennessee Williams Annual Review . Board members were excited about Neri's research as it "enables a fresh reading of Blanche, which is something hard to
come by in the twenty-first century." “Kicks,” an unpublished Tennessee Williams poem
Neri discovered in the HNOC, and that in part inspired her to write Unlocking Desire, was
published in the 2021 Tennessee Williams Annual Review.
A new original recording of the ballad Heavenly Grass, music by Paul Bowles and lyrics by
Tennessee Williams, will introduce the reading and set the mood. Rarely heard, the ballad
features vocals by Ethan Daniel Davidson and instrumentals by Gretchen Gonzales, Warren
Defever and Jordan Schug. Heavenly Grass is sung a cappella by a character named 'Jim'
during the Vodou scene in Unlocking Desire.
Come one come all! The LGBTQIA+ community, people concerned about the effects of
climate change on mental health, those that love a story with strong female characters,
Tennessee Williams fans and scholars, film history buffs!
