When London theater comes to a Brookline screen

His latest play, “The Habit of Art,’’ now playing to full houses in London, is directed by Nicholas Hytner and stars Richard Griffiths. A witty, touching examination of the power and frailty of artists, the limits of biography, and the role of theater, “The Habit of Art’’ presents an imagined meeting between the poet W.H. Auden and the composer Benjamin Britten near the end of their lives, after a 25-year break in their friendship — framed in an equally imagined play about that meeting, with the actors’ interactions in rehearsal breaking into the scene.

“NT Live,’’ the program that has already brought “Phedre’’ and other National Theatre productions to screens around the world, will air a live, high-definition broadcast of “The Habit of Art’’ this Thursday at the Coolidge Corner Theatre.

From his home in London, the affable, modest Bennett, 75, talked last week about “The Habit of Art,’’ the habits of artists, and other subjects, from Hollywood to talking furniture. Here’s a condensed version.

Q. “The Habit of Art’’ is already a play within a play. How do you think it will change the audience’s experience to add another layer to all that, to make it a play within a play within a film?

A. I don’t know, really — I’m waiting to see. I’ve no notion myself.

Q. What led you to write the play in this form?

A. I wrote it as, as it were, a straight play, just the scene in Auden’s room. And it seemed a bit heavy, and I had to keep putting in explanations — the characters explaining to each other what they already knew, which is death to drama. After about two drafts, it occurred to me that if I did it as a play in rehearsal, the actors could be asking for explanations and they could be put in that way, with the author explaining to the audience as well as the actors all the things they needed to know. Also, it could be made funnier.

And the form suggested the blank-verse sort of excursions into the actors’ lives, and the kind of encomium to the National Theatre at the end, which is really from the heart — from me. It widened the possibilities.

Q. And made it possible to have such surreal touches as having Auden’s wrinkles speak, too.

A. That, and the furniture talking as well. Doing that, I thought, well, I wanted to do the exposition, but I didn’t want to have to go through all the boring business of it. I think both Nicholas Hytner and myself were most worried whether the audience would twig to it, but they got it right away.

Q. Were you having a bit of fun at the expense of that sort of experimental theater?

A. Well, when the actor playing the chair says, “I am a chair,’’ you know exactly in what sphere of theater you are. You’ve been there before. And the actors showed what could be done with it.

Q. It often seems that way, that the actors really bring the play to life in rehearsal.

A. Oh, yes, of course. It seems wooden, and then they do things with it you’d never imagine.

[John] Gielgud in “Forty Years On,’’ which was my first stage play proper — he transformed speeches which I thought were almost academic on the page and gave them life.

It’s also one of the pleasures of it. In the plays I’ve done in the National Theatre, we always have a reading when we’ve got a script more or less ready for rehearsal, with whatever actors are there at the time in other plays. But the first time we did that, with “The Madness of George III,’’ Nigel Hawthorne [who later starred] did the reading. And with him particularly, it was the first time you saw that this was more than you’d ever imagined it could be.

Sometimes it’s quite flat. The reading of “History Boys’’ was disastrous, I thought. But Nicholas Hytner thought it was fine, so I thought, all right.

Q. You and Hytner have worked together several times. What makes your collaboration work?

A. I always think that with him he’s very good at getting the mixture right between encouragement and criticism. If you get too much encouragement, then you think it’s all right, and you don’t need to do so much work. If you get too much criticism, it’s the same thing — it kind of quenches your endeavor; you don’t want to go on. He manages to get the mixture right, so that I’m encouraged to go on.

He’s very good with actors. You don’t get the sense when he comes into rehearsal that he’s sometimes carrying all the burdens of the National Theatre. All that is just left at the door, and so it’s his play, in a real sense. You’re putting aside life, and it’s just what’s happening there in the rehearsal room. And that’s joyous, really.

Q. And this play takes place entirely in the rehearsal room — with bits of the actors’ lives popping in.

A. Significantly, in the director’s absence. If the director had been present, he wouldn’t have allowed them to go down all these alleys.

That was also an aspect of how it was written. He would send back drafts with his notes on it. “Too much of this,’’ “Do we need that?’’ Gradually I realized I could feed these into the rehearsal format — and he began to write this play! It was a while before he twigged to it — and then he thought he deserved a credit.

Q. This play seems very much concerned with the question of one’s legacy, of what lives on in art after the artist dies. Is that the concern of a writer in later life?

A. I don’t think it’s particularly my concern. I don’t really think I have any life after I’m gone, and it doesn’t really bother me.

Britten, I think, did care about it. Auden, you never really knew. He was very wrapped up in himself always, but he wasn’t self-regarding in that way. Hs life wasn’t very much fun at the end, not being able to write — or not able to write poetry; he wrote an immense amount of criticism — it happens to poets more.

Q. Elsewhere you quote Auden saying, “Real artists are not nice people.’’ Do you believe that?

A. I think he did. Except he was so — not pleased with himself — but he was such an entity.

Q. So which is more important?

A. Being the artist or being nice? Oh, no, you’ve got to be the artist, and never mind what people think of you.

Q. You’ve written screenplays as well as plays. What changes for you when you switch to writing in that medium?

A. It’s really so long since I’ve done any proper screenwriting, original screenwriting. I think it’s very, very hard to break away from what I’ve written for the stage. I’m supposed to adapt this play, either for a film or for a [British television] Channel 4 film on a small scale. Again I’m finding it very difficult to break out of it, really, or to see it again. I think it’s because I’m too wedded to words, and I don’t think sufficiently in terms of images. And I’m also wedded to historical fact. In “King George,’’ I was very reluctant to make things happen on the screen that hadn’t happened in history. Which is absurd.

If I’d written the film first, then I’d feel different. I would then feel free to range much more widely.

I don’t think, for instance, that adapting this for the screen you can use the same rehearsal format. You couldn’t have the same fun about it. So I’ll have to come up with something different.

Q. Maybe you could have the furniture narrate.

A. [Laughs] You realize that the wonderful thing about the stage is that you can do anything. The cinema, although it ought to be freer, it really isn’t. [Onstage] someone can turn to the audience and speak, and you know he isn’t speaking in the play. You know exactly where you are. You couldn’t do that in the cinema, or you’d have to elaborately prepare it. You’d have to fashion it so that the audience isn’t taken by surprise. Whereas on the stage it doesn’t matter. And I’ve always liked that, when the characters address the audience.

Gielgud, to go back again to “Forty Years On,’’ didn’t like it. He thought it was vulgar, and he had to be persuaded. But once he got the hang of it he couldn’t be stopped from doing it. He would lean right out over the footlights and single people out. It was marvelous. I like breaking the fourth wall.

Q. And cinema doesn’t work that way?

A. Cinema is in a way somehow more conventional. It’s harder to be truly outrageous. That’s why Buñuel is so great. He manages it.

Q. Speaking again of film, I have to ask you about something I heard years ago. Is it true that the studio changed the name of “The Madness of George III’’ to “The Madness of King George’’ because they thought American audiences would think it was a sequel to “The Madness of George I and II’’?

A. They did change the title — but they were very conscious that they were conforming to, as it were, the Sam Goldwyn type. In fact it was Sam Goldwyn Jr. who did it, apologizing about being like Sam Goldwyn Sr. as he said, “They won’t realize what’s happened to the other two.’’ But they were quite contrite about having to ask it.

Louise Kennedy can be reached at kennedy@globe.com.