NPR Playhouse

NPR Playhouse was a series of radio dramas from National Public Radio. The series was a successor to the NPR series Earplay and was discontinued in September 2002.

In 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 "Rebel Mission to Ord Mantell," which precedes The Empire Strikes Back and succeeds Star Wars.

Among the broadcasts in its final season were the science fiction/fantasy anthology 2000X, the Radio Tales series of dramatizations of classic literature and mythology, and the Los Angeles-based Open Stage.

The dramatic-reading series Selected Shorts continued as the only national program devoted to regular offerings of radio drama, leaving aside the sketches on A Prairie Home Companion and Le Show and the intermittent presentation of drama on the largely documentary series The Next Big Thing.

External links

• NPR Playhouse October 1, 2002 - R.I.P., from a production company supplying material to the show
• Collection of NPR Playhouse Broadcasts via Internet Archive

References