Script of The Bell and The Plow and More

Play Background

"Kermit Hunter, Author of 'Unto These Hills' Completes 'Bell and Plow' for Arizona Production" 1953

Cherokee, October 7. ---- Kermit Hunter, one of the nation's most successful young playwrights, disclosed today the completion of a new play, "The Bell and The Plow," which will be produced next spring at Tucson, Arizona.

This will be the seventh big production to come out of the University of North Carolina. It will be the fourth for Hunter who is author of "Unto These Hills," the nationally acclaimed Cherokee Indian drama presented here annually from late June through early September.

The music for the Arizona production, which has been built, around the life of Father Eusebio Kino, a Jesuit missionary who died in 1711, is being written by Jack Frederick Kilpatrick, the Cherokee Indian composer who did the musical score for "Unto These Hills."

  Hunter is revealing his new play and the plans for it, said "The Bell and The Plow" will go into rehearsal at Tucson within the next few weeks and tentatively in scheduled to open in April in the 188-seat [2,500-seat] University of Arizona auditorium.

The project has been undertaken, he said, by the drama department of the University of Arizona and the Corral Theater of Tucson under the director of Peter Marroney. It will be sponsored by the Tucson Festival Association.

 Hunter said plans are being made to later erect an outdoor amphitheater near the mission of San Francisco Xavier del Bac outside of Tucson which was built by Father Kino.

Like Hunter's other plays -- "Unto These Hills," "Horn In the West," and "Forever This Land" -- there runs through "the Bell and the Plow" a spiritual theme of the land as a gift of God, the eternal "westwardness" of man, and the idea that religion and progress must go hand in hand.

The title for the new play was taken from the works of Henry David Thoreau. The bell represents the church and plow civilization.

Basically the story is the life and work of Father Kino, an Italian who first went to Spain after schooling in Germany with a vision of going to China, following in the footsteps of his patron saint, St. Francis Xavier.

But instead of going to China, Father Kino was sent to Mexico City and lower California where he tried to establish missions. The missions failed after five years and he came to northern Sonora and built the mission of Dolores. With that as headquarters he established more than 40 missions up and down the desert valleys of Sonora over a period of 25 years.

He explored Southern Arizona and on west to the Colorado River. He made maps of all that region, including lower California. These maps were standard for a hundred years.

He discovered lower California was not an island but a peninsula. He introduced cattle into Southern California and Arizona.

When Hunter talks of his new play and of Father Kino his eyes light up with the fire of a man living a crusade and his words tumble out with a rush.

"Father Kino was a human dynamo," he said. "He rode thousands of mile on horseback, carrying the gospel to the Pima Sobaipuri Indians. He was known as "The Padre on Horseback."

"So the play traces his career. It relates to Tucson by showing as its climax the building of the mission of San Francisco Xavier del Bac."

He said the play will contain Spanish dances, Indian dances, music of the Roman Catholic mass, pastorals, and a wealth of orchestral coloring combined with a huge chorale ensemble of the University of Arizona.

Hunter goes on to suggest that the mysterious hand of God kept Father Kino at this work in Sonora for the purpose of building a great new civilization in the desert country and making possible the further development of Arizona and California.

The author also stresses the brotherhood of man in the idea that a primitive wilderness can be developed into a great civilization by courage, tolerance, determination and Christian understanding.

The script has been check by church officials in Tucson and also by anthropologists of the University of Arizona for authentication and detail.

Hunter said it was his hope and the hope of the sponsoring organizations that the basic fundamentals of the American ideal will be clearly portrayed in the life of Father Kino - "a man who was Arizona's great first cattle baron, planter, builder, craftsman, mapmaker, pioneer and explorer, in the era when the thirteen colonies were little more than scattered settlements upon and down the Atlantic coast."

Headline: Kermit Hunter, Author of 'Unto These Hills' Completes 'Bell and Plow' for Arizona Production

Subhead: New Work in Ninth To Come Out of UNC, Fourth for Hunter

By John Parris

The Times-News Henderson, North Carolina October 7, 1953 Page 2

Web Link

https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=Qn1hAAAAIBAJ&sjid=1yMEAAAAIBAJ&pg=4916%2C4535105

Notes to Attached Script Copies of The Bell and The Plow

Script by Kermit Hunter and Music & Choral Score by Jack Frederick Fitzpatrick

Notes by Mark O'Hare Tucson, Arizona (6 pages) -- July 2, 2016

1. This typed script is copied from the original mimeograph script (third draft). See Item 2 - AHS Library records. Numbers in brackets [ ] reference original numbered pages in the script.

2. Script and score copies are archived in the Arizona Historical Society (AHS) Library  (Tucson) in the extensive ephemera files concerning The Tucson Festival Society - Record MS 0921: Box 63-64; Album 15. Record finding aid online at http://www.arizonahistoricalsociety.org/wp-content/upLoads/library_Tucson-Festival-Society.pdf

3. Additional AHS Library contents: review comments to the script made by Dr. Edward Spicer, Rev. Celestine Chinn O.F.M. Two other Spanish colonial historians trained by Herbert Bolton: Dr. Peter Dunne, S.J. and Dr. Russell Ewing reviewed; copies of Fitzpatrick's submitted score and the performance score that was transcribed for additional instruments; notes of the critique meeting by members of the Tucson Festival Society after the performances; publicity & correspondence.

4. U.S. Copyright Office. The Arizona Corral Theater, Inc. is the copyright owner of record. The copyright entry web link is at
https://archive.org/stream/catalogofcopyrig3834libr/catalogofcopyrig3834libr_djvu.txt "ARIZONA CORRAL THEATRE, INC. The Bell and The Plow, a musical play in two acts by Kermit Hunter. [Text only] Appl. Author: Arizona Corral Theatre, Inc., Employer for hire of Kermit Hunter. © Arizona Corral Theatre, Inc.; 12Apr54;  DU36677. "
Arizona Corral Theater, Inc. no longer exists. Highly likely that play is in the public domain. No record can be found of Arizona Corral's copyright being renewed.

5. The University of East Carolina Library's 46 online images in its "The Bell and the Plow" scrapbook includes the performance program, newspapers articles, Tucson Festival publicity and records. Link at https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/36522#details.  It is part of Outdoor Theater Collection.

6. "The Bell and The Plow" Scrapbook Images from the East Carolina University Library at  https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/36522#details

Kino Play Costume Sketch by Artist Ross Stefan

Scenes and Characters

THE BELL AND THE PLOW

WRITTEN BY KERMIT HUNTER

MUSIC BY JACK FREDERICK KILPATRICK

T H I R D  D R A F T

TIME: 1680 to 1700

PLACE: Spain, Mexico, Lower California, Arizona

ACT I

Scene 1: Grand Ballroom in the palace of the Duke of Arcos, Madrid,  April 12, 1680, about 10:00 in the evening

Scene 2: Kino's quarters in the Jesuit College, Cadiz, one evening  a week later

Scene 3: Reception room in Father Pardo's quarters in the Cathedral, Mexico City, early afternoon in the spring of 1682

Scene 4: A hill above the Bay of La Paz, Lower California, spring and summer, 1683

Scene 5: The Mission of San Bruno, Lower California, May 1685

ACT II

Scene 1: The Mission of Dolores, northern Sonora, a late afternoon in January, 1695

Scene 2: Northern Sonora, summer of 1695

Scene 3: The Mission of San Xavier del Bac, southern Arizona, late afternoon April 28, 1770.

The characters and events in this play are based on actual historical records. Certain modifications have been made in the interest of dramatic unity.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Duchess of Aveiro, Arcos y Macqueda

The Duke, her husband

Father Eusebio Francisco Kino, a Jesuit priest

Father Juan Maria Salvatierra, his friend

Father Antonio Kerschpamer, a member of their company

Carlos de Siguenza y Gongora, professor of mathematics at the Royal University in Mexico City

Father Bernardo Pardo, the Jesuit provincial in Mexico City

The Conde de Paredes, Viceroy of Mexico

Reader of scroll at La Paz, California

Isidro de Atondo y Antillon, an admiral of the Spanish fleet

Father Mathias Goni, companion of Kino in California

Soldier at La Paz

Blas de Guzman, ship captain for the California expedition

Alferes Lascano, another ship captain

Francisca, the Indian girl brought from California by Kino

Pedro, a servant at the Mission of Dolores

Concha, serving woman at Dolores Mission

Conchita, serving woman at Dolores Mission

Father Francisco Xavier de Mora, Kino's superior from Arizpe

Father Horacio Polici, visitor representing the Provincial

Juan Matheo Manje, captain in the Spanish army, alcalde of the district at Dolores

Eusebio, brother of Francisca

Spanish leader at Tupo

Historian

Priests, acolytes, government officials, guests soldiers, Indians

Tucson Festival Society 1954 Tucson Tohono Festival Brochure Page 1

The intent of the Tucson Festival Society was to stage The Bell and The Plough Kino  play annually but due to financial considerations it was only performed in 1954. The Tucson Festival Society continued its annual programs and performances celebrating worldwide and Southwestern art and culture until 1996. In 1982 the Society sponsored the beginnings of the Tucson International Mariachi Conference that led to the popularity of the mariachi music tradition throughout the United States.