The Habit of Art

Richard has asked me to point out that Alan Bennett's new play The Habit of Art, currently playing at the National Theatre in London, will have a "live" performance on the big screen in DC's Shakespeare Theater's Sidney Harmon Hall on May 3. Admission is general but reservations are required and may soon be unobtainable! I've just read the play and think it very well may be a text we will choose to discuss. The playscript is a more challenging read than we've done so far (actors rehearsing for a play, sometimes being themselves, sometimes the characters in the play which they're rehearsing), in particular than Bennett's The History Boys, so viewing a production first might be helpful (though I expect there'll be a local production before we get around to reading it). The log line for The Habit of Art might be "W.H. Auden and Benjamin Britten end a twenty-five year estrangement to talk about the boys (and yes, Viriginia, we do mean boys) in their lives." Britten is at the moment composing his great opera of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice (which we read some years ago) and ostensibly turning to Auden for both encouragement and the courage to "come out" in an opera so revealing of himself.