As part of the campaign for Issue 31, a large group of Cleveland artists staged a 31-hour performance marathon in the lobby of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum from Sunday 2/29 at 10AM through Monday 3/1 at 5PM. This massive effort was organized by the Cleveland Theater Collective, directed by Margaret Lynch and Fred Gloor. The following is Margaret's personal blog of the event.

Since few people experienced this extraordinary act of commitment on the part of about 115 artists, I feel compelled to bear witness–from the reports of myself (chief organizer and cheer leader Margaret Lynch), of emcee‑extraordinaire Fred Gloor, and of super‑volunteer Kevin Cronin–all of whom spent at least 25 of the 31 hours at the Rock Hall. Special thanks to the energetic and upbeat Jan Purdy of the Rock Hall–and her staff, especially technicians Sean and Sollie‑‑for going to great lengths to make our stay at the Rock Hall comfortable and welcoming.

10AM The African Grove Ensemble–in the persons of Prester Pickett and Robert Coleman–open things up by exploring the African-American experience through words and music, from aching spirituals to the silky sounds of Stevie Wonder. The cavernous space of the Rock Hall rings with Martin Luther King’s famous words, “Free at Last.” Quoting Gil Herron, Prester wakes us up and puts us in the right frame of mind. “Stay alert” he intones, for “earth‑shaking change.”

10:30AM Toting a brand new guitar, Lissy Gulick takes the mike. The “least known authority on Anglo‑American folk music,” she calls herself. Her voice–sweet, soothing, yet strong–befits the quiet calm of a Sunday morning. The refrain from a song sung by the Kingston Trio--“The river is wide. I cannot see. Nor do I have light wings to fly.”-- swells through the Hall.

11AM Whoaah. SAFMOD arrives. Ezra Hauser and Aaron Bonk climb onto their stilts, outrageous in red and yellow mesh, hatted in orange and black and red felt dreads. Weaving to the lilt of reggae music, they sashay about the Rock Hall lobby, ducking under and around the suspended cars that are remnants from a U2 tour. Then–have you ever seen men on stilts folding themselves to fit through a revolving door? – they stilt‑stroll around the plaza in front of the landmark building. It’s unseasonably warm for a Sunday morning in February. Surprised visitors warm even further to the infectious SAFMOD brand of play.

Noon: The rhythm changes again, when Robin Pease of Kulture Kids takes the stage. Hair braided, dressed in beaded buckskin, she does a traditional Native American dance to welcome Spring. She plays a cedar flute, made for her by one of only 13 Native American flute makers in the country, someone who lives right here in this area. Visitors with children stop to listen, as she captivates them with the story of “Why Cherokee People Eat Strawberries.”

(Visitors! So far we’ve talked with very few people from Cuyahoga County. We might have expected people from Columbus, Cincinnati, Jamestown, New York, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and Detroit, Michigan, but are surprised to encounter people from Utah, Alaska, England, Germany, and Japan! We’re learning first‑hand that the Rock Hall is indeed a major tourist attraction, the kind of engine for economic develoPM'''ent touted for Issue 31. But few Cuyahoga County voters walk through the doors on Sunday. We make the best of the situation, and tell these folks to tell their friends back home what a cool place Cleveland is.)

1PM It’s the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, so it’s finally time for some rock and roll, or for some sizzling swamp pop, to be exact. With arts activist and electronic maven Thomas Mulready on drums, the band Cats on Holiday starts cooking. The lobby pulses with their rockabilly twang and dancing beat.

2PM Four young performers from the Cleveland Shakespeare Festival claim the playing space next, condensing Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream into a 45‑minute romp. “Oh, courageous day,” cries actor Tim Keo, expressing the can‑do spirit of this particular day. In the background, the Art Crew from the Cleveland Museum of Art also arrives. Attired as works of art–an Egyptian sarcophagus cover, a Louise Nevelson sculpture, and a Picasso Harlequin–they pose with visitors and take Polaroid snapshots of them.

3PM More Shakespeare, as some of Cleveland’s Equity actors group around music stands for a reading of A Winter’s Tale. Led by organizer Jay Kim, a cast of 10 that includes Chuck Kartali, Paula Duesing, Cassie Vincent, and Jeff Allen, tackles the complicated emotional range of one of Shakespeare’s late plays.

4PM Zany virtuosity and loopy accents reign as Randy Rollison, Jen Clifford, Marni Task, and Meg Chamberlain reprise their multiple roles in a comedy called Wait, which was staged this past fall by a new theater troupe, TITLEWave, in cooperation with Cleveland Public Theatre.

5PM As the Rock Hall is about to close, a crowd of friends and supporters gather. The young cast of Loud Americans: A Punk Saga and the high voltage Punk Project band storm the stage with a scene and music from a play presented at Dobama’s Night Kitchen. Visitors leave the Rock Hall on a blast of blistering punk.

6PM Red Hen Productions, Cleveland’s feminist theater, reads a play they’re thinking of producing, a short piece called Trifles, penned in 1917 by Susan Glaspell. In rehearsal mode, directorAM'''anda Shaeffer allows the cast to read the script once straight through. Then she reassigns roles for a second reading, stopping this time to ask the actors to consider questions about character motivation and plot.

7PM Hassan Rogers arrives with two of his sons, drums and trumpet in hand, and enlists their help as he launches into the interactive drumming and story telling that make up “Story Time with Hassan.” One minute, his older son launches into a mellow jazz solo on the trumpet, and another Hassan is playing out the monkey role in his up-to-the-minute version of a traditional African trickster tale.

8PM Chuck Kartali returns and joins actor Peter Manos, artistic director of Bodwin Theatre, in a reading of The Zoo Story. Chuck and Peter each recently performed the piece but in different productions--Chuck for Charenton Theater Company, and Peter for Bodwin. Now two veteran Cleveland actors who have never worked with each other before tear into Albee’s absurdist masterpiece. Bodwin’s Kevin Cronin also adds a short monologue from Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, offering food for thought as Cleveland ponders its lakefront.

9PM Cleveland director Jacqi Loewy was given an opportunity by the John A. Mac Alonan? Fund of the Akron Community Foundation to work with actor Myron Lewis to create a dramatic piece based on Lewis’s experiences as an adolescent chemical dependency counselor for the Akron Health Department. Myron shares the one‑man show that resulted from their collaboration–“Mr. Lewis Rules: Stories from the Juvenile Justice System.”

10PM The Irish Rodeo Clowns, led by raconteur and man‑about‑town John Regan, with musical accompaniment from John Franks, bring some of the raucous and impromptu fun of Flanagan’s Wake to the party.

11PM Photographer Karen St. Vincent stages a performance art installation. Working to the insistent beat of Nine Inch Nails, she sets up a group of collaborators in a tableau involving an artist who finds herself caught in a web woven by a businessman and others. Through her camera lens, Karen explores the questions that Issue 31 raises for her about the complex relationship between art and money.

Midnight-2AM Some of Cleveland’s premiere improv people arrive on the scene–funsters from Cabaret Dada and Oliver Twisted‑‑Fred Gloor, Aaron Patterson, Dave Amiott, Mike Martone, Mike Hagesfeld, Nate Cockerill, and Cody Dove (I’m naming them all because they were good enough to take the midnight hours). They careen through a boundless repertory of improv games, including a hilarious, extended pantomime debate about “magnanimous stadiums agitating” that had one observer falling off her chair with laughter. You had to be there. No one WAS there, but like all the artists on the bill, they performed their hearts out anyway.

2‑5AM Special thanks to artist John Rivera Resto for taking the graveyard shift, thus allowing the 31 hours to be consecutive. John brings with him the intricately drawn story boards for Bad Blood, a film that he’s planning that will involve a number of Cleveland area actors. John talks a small but hearty band of “31 for 31" survivors through the story‑boards, then sets to work on an ink‑wash drawing that documents the presence of “31 for 31" in the Rock Hall Lobby. When the drawing is complete, John bestows it on Jan Purdy, who returns at dawn to supervise a television crew set‑up.

5AM “31 for 31" goes live on Channel 3‑‑AT 5AM'''!!!–as David Hansen, artistic director of Bad Epitaph Theatre Company and actor-teacher for Great Lakes Theater Festival, delivers his searing monologue, I Hate This. Presented last year as part of Cleveland Public Theatre’s Big Box series, and reprised at Dobama Theatre and at the Minnesota Fringe Festival, I Hate This chronicles the loss of David and his wife Toni’s stillborn son.

6AM The reflective mood of the previous hour gives way to some kick‑*** rock and roll from 4/5ths of the band Vanity Crash. Joe of “Brian and Joe” radio fame can’t believe his ears when he receives a cell phone call from the Rock Hall and hears Vanity Crash biting into a David Bowie song. “You mean there are people playing rock and roll at 6:30AM?” he marvels. Yes, but come 7AM, the band members have to trade their wild “glam‑rock” stripes for business suits and khaki pants as they head reluctantly to their day jobs.

7AM Quiet concentration reigns again as members of the New World Performance Lab don loose‑fitting white tunics and pants and begin the physical and spatial exercises that are a daily part of their ensemble‑building theater work. Exploring the new territory of the Rock Hall Lobby, they claim it as their own work space.

8‑10AM The baton passes to four Case Western Reserve University MFA students, who bring along a backpack filled with scripts. They rip through several short plays with energetic abandon. The lack of an audience doesn’t at all dim the enthusiastic commitment that these young actors have for their work. CWRU and the Cleveland Play House have a unique partnership, and all of the students, members of Actor’s Equity Association, the professional stage actors union, have performed at the Play House in its current season. Where else would a student get such an opportunity? “Nowhere” they all agreed.

10AM Led by artistic director Michael Medcalf, the Cleveland Contemporary Dance Theatre starts the exercises that are a part of their daily class routine. They work their way from stretching to phrases of movement to an entire dance that draws an admiring crowd of museum‑goers. This dance will be part of the upcoming Danceworks ’04 series at Cleveland Public Theatre.

(Admission to the Rock Hall is 31 cents today, Mond 3/1, as a way of expressing support for Issue 31. Out‑of‑town visitors, from Kentucky to Colorado, are still prevalent, but the admission give‑away does draw local attendees. Several say that they were on the fence about Issue 31 until they realized that the Rock Hall was giving them almost as much of a break on admission as they would have to pay in increased taxes. The Rock Hall’s generosity and commitment turned them around.)

11AM The Eclectic CirCus, a mix of four artists who do mime, magic, and juggling, are hard at work when a busload of school children pours into the lobby. The kids crowd around and gasp with delight. In the background, Corlette Thomas Baylock, a visual artist who helped pioneer the transformation of the Colonial Arcade into the AR Tcade?, uses his trademark nut imagery to paint a sign proclaiming “I’m nuts about Issue 31.”

Noon The Dancing Wheels, another of northeast Ohio’s unique and nationally known arts institutions, presents a demonstration of one of its outreach performances developed in collaboration with choreographer Tom Evert. A sitting dancer wheels his chair in wide arcs, partnering in a duet with a standing dancer to the strains of a Beatles refrain, “Sleep, pretty darling, do not cry, and I will sing a lullabye.”

1PM The lobby of the Rock Hall is crisscrossed by escalators and jutting terraces ringed with railings. Look up into the soaring rafters as poets Kevin Kaos Moore and Vince Robinson fill the Hall with their words, and you will see curious museum‑goers leaning on the railings and listening intently. Kevin and Vince, members of Cleveland’s 2003 Poetry Slam team, are joined by Kisha Foster, who arrives from a class at CSU to contribute her bounding energy and voice. Also, the Rock Hall gets a surprise visit from singer Carole King. In between mugging with 12-foot Fender Stratocasters, part of Cleveland’s Guitarmania project, she told “31 for 31" organizers that the arts are “vital” to education and society and applauded the effort to build public support for the arts.

2PM Changing the mood again, two actresses from Ensemble Theatre contribute determined dignity to the proceedings. Joyce Meadows and Norma Powell embody two elderly black women, sisters, who share a long lifetime of family stories and photographs in Having Our Say.

3PM Two actors, puppets, and some music–that’s all it takes to create the entire world of Jabberwocky, a children’s musical produced by the Cleveland Play House. Singing without mikes, Rebecca Borger and Kevin Joseph Kelly command the attention of museum‑goers with small children, who gather round to learn the fate of the Jabberwocky.

4PM The final hour of “31 for 31" sports the final round of top‑shelf talent, this time from Great Lakes Theater Festival. Actors Andrew May, Laura Perotta, Scott Plate and Alicia Kahn enjoy the pleasure of scenes from Private Lives, The Crucible and Shakespeare. With the help of the Rock Hall’s Jan Purdy, they use one of the lobby terraces to engineer an engaging version of the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet. Then, at 5PM''', with a camera from Channel 3 rolling again, “31 for 31" is a wrap.

I’m sorry I couldn’t name every one of the 115 artists who contributed their time, energy, talent and commitment to make “31 for 31" a splendid showcase for Cleveland artists–put together on about ten days’ notice. But heartfelt thanks to each and all–and to all those who wanted to contribute but couldn’t. Issue 31 didn’t pass, but we demonstrated that we could put on a helluva show. And we’re ready for the next one.

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