12 | North Platte Travel Guide 2024
STEP INTO THE PAST
September Canteen Festival Features New Musical’s Debut BY TODD VON KAMPEN todd.vonkampen@nptelegraph.com
This fall’s fourth annual celebration of North Platte’s famous World War II Canteen features the world premiere of a full-length musical on western Nebraska’s 1941-46 homegrown phenomenon of hospitality. The Sept. 27-28 festival in the downtown Canteen District will coincide with the opening performances of “The North Platte Canteen: A Musical Miracle,” set for Sept. 27-29 and Oct. 4-6 at the 1929 Fox Theatre, 307 E. Fifth St. The North Platte Community Playhouse will stage the production by co-writers Johnny Rodgers and Sue Fabisch Errico, whose 2008 show “Motherhood: The Musical” has been produced nationally and internationally. It received its first “staged reading” workshop in September 2023 in Franklin, Tennessee. A group of North Platte women led by Rae Wilson opened the Canteen on Christmas Day 1941. They served some 6 million U.S. and Allied service members between then and April 1, 1946, gradually joined by some 55,000 volunteers
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