NPR goes a little show biz

National Public Radio’s East Coast executives were in town en masse six weeks ago to usher in the opening of NPR’s new West Coast studios -- Hollywood-style. There was no party at Spago, no red carpet; instead, they were attending the world premiere of an unlikely project: a five-part radio play running this week on the network’s most popular news program, “Morning Edition With Bob Edwards.”

“I’d Rather Eat Pants,” recorded Nov. 1 at the Museum of Television & Radio in Beverly Hills, is an L.A. Theatre Works production of a Peter Ackerman play specially commissioned for NPR. Each 8 1/2-minute segment will air locally on public radio stalwarts KCRW-FM (89.9) and KPCC-FM (89.3).

Edwards and “Morning Edition” special correspondent Susan Stamberg, a longtime fan of the L.A. Theatre Works troupe, share the stage with such show business veterans as Edward Asner, Anne Meara and Ed Begley Jr. -- Edwards as host of “Morning Edition” and Stamberg as a reporter on the show.

“Both are playing outsized versions of themselves,” “Morning Edition” senior producer Susan Feeney said of the news contingent. “We’re poking fun, a bit. Because our audience is incredibly loyal, we’re able to try new things.”

Though NPR announcers have appeared in news-related or promotional skits over the years, the network has never folded an original production -- this one almost vaudevillian in feel -- into its most important news offering.

It wasn’t an easy sell. Immersion in local culture (“Hollywood, show biz”) may herald NPR’s expanding acknowledgment of the West and a lessening of “East Coast bias,” said “Morning Edition” executive producer Ellen McDonnell. But the NPR executives, after all, had an institution to protect.

“I’m a news producer and I come up with the idea of putting what is essentially a soap opera in the middle of ‘Morning Edition,’ a 23-year-old show with 13 million listeners,” McDonnell recalled after the sold-out taping. “That would give anyone pause. No one understood what I was talking about. But they never said ‘no.’ ”

The idea got off the ground after a lunch last June attended by McDonnell, Feeney, Stamberg and Susan Loewenberg, Theatre Works’ producing director. After a programming executive discovered an unused grant slotted -- amazingly -- for “radio drama,” Ackerman (“Things You Shouldn’t Say Past Midnight”) was asked to write a 40-minute, Los Angeles-themed play in which each of the five acts ends in a cliffhanger. The program would run at holiday time, they figured, when everyone needs a boost.

Directed by Gordon Hunt (“Frasier,” “Mad About You”), the story revolves around the Peppersteins -- a duplicitous New York couple who hook up with Wisdom (Derek Cecil), a California surfer dude whose brain, they’re convinced, is “pierced.”

Traveling cross-country on his motorcycle, they land in the office of Barney Kikkle, an unscrupulous Hollywood agent on the lam from the mob. After some wacky encounters (including a bizarre reunion with their long-lost daughter), the onetime grocery store owners land their own reality show and are interviewed by “Susan Stamberg, Culver City.”

One of the early hosts of “All Things Considered,” Stamberg admits to being a ham. Though radio still appeals, she jokes about giving up her day job. “Susan thinks she’s going to be ‘discovered’ and get a film contract,” McDonnell said. “I keep reminding her it’s a bit part.”

Stamberg rehearsed for two days -- considerably less than the rest of the cast, which also includes Dan Castellaneta, Clea Lewis, Kendall Schmidt, Jonathan Banks and Emily Bergl. “It’s so different from what we do: grabbing a story, turning it around, getting it out and on to the next,” she said.

Edwards was dazzled by the chance to rub elbows with Meara, Asner and Begley, personalities he says he used to watch before rising early for “Morning Edition” made prime-time viewing off-limits.

“I’m star-struck,” Edwards said. “It’s great to be surrounded by people who make a living through laughs. Since I’ve missed 23 years of prime-time viewing and know little of popular culture, these people are my references. I just heard that Mary Tyler Moore has gone off the air.”

Some in the NPR community find theater and news an odd fit, reflective of an overall softening in the network’s reportage. For Edwards, it’s a welcome respite from the daily diet of war, famine and disease.

“We need something to restore the humanity -- ‘please let me believe in something’ -- and lighten things up,” Edwards said. “On other outlets, you get that all the time with the occasional serious story. We’re just the opposite.”

KPCC news director Paul Glickman agrees. “One of the problems NPR has is the image of being stodgy and overly earnest, so this is a step in the right direction,” he said. “Still, putting on more than 40 minutes of comedy -- the hardest form of writing -- in the space of five days is a risk ... an ambitious experiment, I’d say.”

One thing is certain: The exposure will be good for Loewenberg, whose company performs in “The Play’s the Thing” -- a show airing Saturdays at 8 p.m. on KPCC.

“Plays normally get relegated to low-listening periods,” she said. “Being on in drive time is pretty impossible because it’s hard to compete with [NPR’s] ‘Car Talk’ or ‘An American Life.’ I hope this serves as a great hors d’oeuvre before the main course, our two-hour show.”

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“I’d Rather Eat Pants”

When: Airs Monday through Friday at 4:40 a.m, 6:40 a.m., and 8:40 a.m.

Station: KCRW (89.9-FM) and KPCC (89.3-FM)