NT Live: The Habit of Art

Alan Bennett's highly acclaimed new play The Habit of Art, directed by Nicholas Hytner, will be filmed live at the National Theatre in London on Thursday, April 22nd (7 pm ET/PT and 8 pm MT/CT) and broadcast by satellite to Cineplex Entertainment theatres across the country. The Habit of Art is the final play in the pilot season of NT Live, following the hugely successful broadcasts of Phèdre, All's Well That Ends Well and Nation.

The Habit of Art is as much about the theatre as it is about poetry or music. It looks at the unsettling desires of two difficult men—Benjamin Britten and W H Auden—and at the ethics of biography. It reflects on growing old, on creativity and inspiration, and on persisting when all passion's spent: ultimately, on the habit of art.

Benjamin Britten, sailing uncomfortably close to the wind with his new opera, Death in Venice, seeks advice from his former collaborator and friend, W H Auden. During this imagined meeting, their first for twenty-five years, they are observed and interrupted by, amongst others, their future biographer and a young man from the local bus station.