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NPR Playhouse was a series ofradio dramas fromNational Public Radio. The series was a successor to the NPR seriesEarplay and was discontinued in September 2002.
Beginning on March 1, 1981,[1] thePlayhouse production of the first of theStar Wars radio dramas, a 13-part 6½-hour version ofthe originalStar 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 precedesThe Empire Strikes Back and succeedsStar Wars: A New Hope.[2][3]
In 1985 producer/director Roger Rittner produced the acclaimedAdventures ofDoc Savage series forNPR Playhouse. The 13-episode series consisted of serialized versions of two ofLester Dent'sDoc Savage pulp novels.
Among the broadcasts in its final season were thescience fiction/fantasy anthology2000X, theRadio Tales series of dramatizations of classic literature and mythology, and the Los Angeles-basedOpen Stage.
The dramatic-reading seriesSelected Shorts continued as the only national program devoted to regular offerings of radio drama, leaving aside the sketches onA Prairie Home Companion andLe Show and the intermittent presentation of drama on the largely documentary seriesThe Next Big Thing.
The series aired selected productions from the CBC horror-anthology seriesNightfall in the early 1980s.
