''NPR Playhouse'' was a series of
radio drama
Radio drama (or audio drama, audio play, radio play, radio theatre, or audio theatre) is a dramatized, purely acoustic performance. With no visual component, radio drama depends on dialogue, music and sound effects to help the listener imagine ...
s from
National Public Radio
National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other ...
. The series was a successor to the NPR series ''
Earplay
''Earplay'' was the longest-running of the formal series of radio drama anthologies on National Public Radio, produced by WHA in Madison, Wisconsin and heard from 1972 into the 1990s. It approached radio drama as an art form with scripts written ...
'' and was discontinued in September 2002.
Beginning on March 1, 1981, the ''Playhouse'' production of the first of the
''Star Wars'' radio dramas, a 13-part 6½-hour version of
the original ''Star Wars'' film, generated the largest response in NPR's history, with an audience averaging over 750,000 listeners per episode. A 14th episode was produced for this series consisting of an audio documentary of the production. The series author,
Brian Daley, also wrote the script to the audio drama "Rebel Mission to Ord Mantell", which precedes ''The Empire Strikes Back'' and succeeds ''Star Wars: A New Hope''.
In 1985 producer/director Roger Rittner produced the acclaimed ''Adventures of
Doc Savage
Doc Savage is a fictional character of the competent man hero type, who first appeared in American pulp magazines during the 1930s and 1940s. Real name Clark Savage Jr., he is a doctor, scientist, adventurer, detective, and polymath who "rights w ...
'' series for ''NPR Playhouse''. The 13-episode series consisted of serialized versions of two of
Lester Dent
Lester Dent (October 12, 1904 – March 11, 1959) was an American pulp-fiction writer, best known as the creator and main writer of the series of novels about the scientist and adventurer Doc Savage. The 159 Doc Savage novels that Dent wrote over ...
's ''Doc Savage'' pulp novels.
Among the broadcasts in its final season were the
science fiction
Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...
/
fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction involving Magic (supernatural), magical elements, typically set in a fictional universe and sometimes inspired by mythology and folklore. Its roots are in oral traditions, which then became fantasy ...
anthology ''
2000X
''2000X'' is a dramatic anthology series released by National Public Radio and produced by the Hollywood Theater of the Ear. There were 49 plays of various lengths in 26 one-hour programs broadcast weekly and later released on the Internet. Plays ...
'', the ''
Radio Tales
''Radio Tales'' is an American series of radio drama which premiered on National Public Radio on October 29, 1996. This series adapted classic works of American and world literature such as ''The War of the Worlds'', ''Twenty Thousand Leagues Un ...
'' series of dramatizations of classic literature and mythology, and the Los Angeles-based ''
Open Stage
In theatre, a thrust stage (also known as a platform stage or open stage) is one that extends into the audience on three sides and is connected to the backstage area by its upstage end. A thrust has the benefit of greater intimacy between performe ...
''.
The dramatic-reading series ''
Selected Shorts
Selected Shorts is an event at New York's Symphony Space on the Upper West Side, in which screen and stage actors read classic and new short fiction before a live audience. The stage show began in 1985 and continues today at Symphony Space's Pet ...
'' continued as the only national program devoted to regular offerings of radio drama, leaving aside the sketches on ''
A Prairie Home Companion
''A Prairie Home Companion'' is a weekly radio variety show created and hosted by Garrison Keillor that aired live from 1974 to 2016. In 2016, musician Chris Thile took over as host, and the successor show was eventually renamed ''Live from He ...
'' and ''
Le Show
''Le Show'' is a weekly syndicated public radio show hosted by satirist Harry Shearer.
The program is a hodgepodge of satirical news commentary, music, and sketch comedy. Shearer, an impressionist known for his voice work on ''The Simpsons'', w ...
'' and the intermittent presentation of drama on the largely documentary series ''
The Next Big Thing''.
The series aired selected productions from the CBC horror-anthology series ''Nightfall'' in the early 1980s.
External links
NPR Playhouse October 1, 2002 - R.I.P. from a production company supplying material to the show
Collection of NPR Playhouse Broadcastsvia
Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...
References
{{NPR
American radio dramas
Anthology radio series
NPR programs
1981 radio programme debuts
2002 radio programme endings