I first conceived the idea of writing a stage play about the Alamo after reading Walter Lord's book, A Time to Stand. Few moments in world history can match the intensity, the drama, and the emotion generated by re-living the final moments of those doomed men inside the small garrison in San Antonio on that cold March morning in 1836, and I, like many others, was captivated. I wrote the play for the celebration of the Texas Sesquicentennial of 1986.
The script was developed by Capitol City Playhouse of Austin and presented at Zilker Hillside Theatre to wonderful crowds, but afterwards the script sat in my drawer for thirteen years. Then I met Tom Masinter, composer, pianist, entertainer, teacher, entrepreneur, and now a good friend. He was looking for a playwright who would write the story of the Alamo for a musical, and he had heard through a mutual friend that I had the play already written. We met each other for the first time at the New Braunfels Smokehouse half-way between our respective homes in Austin and San Antonio, and we have met there many, many times since. We added lyricist June Rachelson-Ospa from New York, and our team was complete.
June flew down to San Antonio, and we took her to the Alamo Village in Bracketville where John Wayne had filmed his movie "The Alamo," and then we wined and dined her on the Riverwalk of San Antonio before showing her the sacred grounds of the real Alamo. Tom took her to Mexico to give her the true feel for the land south of the Rio Grande. She returned to New York with a new-found sense of Texas, and her lyrics took off from there. After several years and thousands of e-mails and phone calls. GONE TO TEXAS, the Musical is being produced by the Josephine Theatre of San Antonio on April 5,6,7 and12,13,14 in 2002. We believe the men of the Alamo would appreciate our rendering of their final moments.
Steve Warren, playwright
web site by: Celeste Masinter
