24 Hours at the Open Festival : Talent: A journey to 16 programs shows the broad array of art available.

Choosing among the events at the Open Festival is not an easy task.

After all, organizers of the two-week festival didn’t. Their mandate was to include any self-proclaimed artist, performer or group that wanted to sign up, and more than 600 did just that.

Forty-three of the events at the two week-festival, which ends Sunday, are scheduled for the San Fernando Valley, including singers, belly-dancers, the art of Glendale, 10-year-old violinists, environmental theater, the art of Osaka, women photographers, hula dancing and improvisational theater.

We decided to skip the choosing, too. The only true way to get a feeling for the festival was, we figured, to pack as many of the events as possible into 24 hours. By juggling schedules and not seeing all of any one performance, it was possible to squeeze in 16 events beginning last Saturday at 5 p.m.

Our Valley cultural odyssey took us over 160 miles of freeways and side streets to venues ranging from basketball courts to living rooms. The offerings ranged from the sublime to the offensive, with the one commonality being the heat--almost every event, even those at night, was played against the background whir of fans and/or air conditioners.

Many of the events felt like family affairs, with relatives and close friends of performers comprising most of the audience. At nearly every performance, at least one person stood in the back, recording a home video with a portable camera.

5 p.m. Saturday: It might have been just a humble basketball court, but to those willing to make the leap of faith, the recreation hall of the North Weddington Recreation Center in North Hollywood was for that day a South Seas village. Outside, bare-chested men in flowered sarongs were barbecuing while inside there was dancing. A lot of dancing.

On the program for “Rhythms of Polynesia” were 40 dance demonstrations by the Valley-based Fantasi Dancers, including the “Samoan Slap Dance,” “Cock-Eyed Mayor” and “I Am Hawaii” numbers.

At the opposite end of the court a few little girls tried to imitate the dancers, and a woman at a food stand sold “Polynesian Polish Dogs.” “They’re hot dogs that have been marinated,” she explained with a laugh.

7:30 p.m.: Three girls--ages 10, 10 and 11--sat in the front of a small audience at the McGroarty Art Center in Tujunga, playing a flute-violin-cello arrangement of the theme from Brahm’s Symphony No. 1. They played slowly, with great seriousness.

They played the second number of the program, sponsored by the Meremblum youth orchestra organization, with equal solemnity even though it was a suite of songs from “Fiddler on the Roof.” The audience applauded wildly and at the end the three girls broke into delighted giggles.

“You guys were awesome,” said one of the musicians while waiting to go on as the trio filed back to their seats.

Next up was “Remembrance,” a short Charles Ives piece for four instruments based on a text that begins, “A sound of a distant horn . . . “ As the young musicians were setting up, a woman in the audience motioned toward a boy carrying a French horn and quietly told the man next to her, “That’s my son, the distant horn.”

8:15 p.m.: The small house on Simpson Street in North Hollywood used to be a horse stable. Then it was a family’s house, then a children’s arts center and now it’s an adult arts center. On this night workshop students who meet at the center gave a performance that included dance, poetry and music.

It was, like many Open Festival programs, a mixture of styles. A woman sang “The Man I Love,” two women did a sultry jazz dance and a young woman elegantly attired in a black dress and pearls played a violin solo.

The living room of the house was so packed for the performance that several people sat on folding chairs on the lawn under an unusually starry sky, watching through a picture window.

9 p.m.: Theater East, the venerable Valley theater atop a bowling alley in Studio City, put on “Dead End at Sunset,” an original adaptation of Maxim Gorky’s classic “The Lower Depths.” The adaptation was so original that it moved the drama from Russia to a seedy apartment complex in Hollywood, circa 1932, where a group of downtrodden dreamers resided.

The large cast moved through the play with vigor, so much so that at the end of a scene actor John Hugo, charged with murder in the play, is dragged off stage and the heel of his boot becomes loose.

“Lucky thing you’re in jail, now,” Jack Breschard, one of the producers, told Hugo backstage as the actor tried to fix the boot.

10:30 p.m.: A group calling itself the Los Angeles Festival Improv frantically ran through a retinue of theater games at the Wild Side Theater in North Hollywood. Audience members were called upon every few minutes to yell out suggestions and luckily nearly all were willing to participate repeatedly. The audience numbered 12.

11 a.m. Sunday: One floor down from The Art Store, an arts supply store in Studio City, is a small, simple art gallery. For the Open Festival it was filled with paintings and sculptures by the Kobo Art Ensemble, a group of Japanese, American and European artists who work in Osaka, Japan, with graphic artist Kobo Ishikawa.

“We all use kind of a mixture of Japanese and European styles,” said Philip Bossant, a strapping, blond painter who left L.A. two years ago to work and study in Japan. He supports his art endeavors there by teaching English.

Bossant and exhibit curator Lauren Peterson pointed toward a painting of a flower done in broad, red brush strokes by artist Toshiaki Yamada. Called “Fevered Flower,” it’s a tribute to Van Gogh’s sunflowers. “It’s because the Japanese word for ‘cough’ sounds like ‘Gogh,’ ” explained Peterson as the artist, who speaks no English, stood by. “ ‘Cough’ led to ‘fever’ and that led to the idea of the painting.”

11:30 a.m.: The Glendale Art Assn. set up an exhibit of paintings by its members in a storefront in the Glendale Fashion Center. The mall was nearly deserted on a Sunday morning and the exhibit was not easy to find.

“Look at the beautiful banner they gave us,” said one of the art association members in the storefront to a visitor as she unfurled an official festival banners. “We couldn’t put it up by the street because of the sign law in Glendale. It’s such a shame.”

Out front, at a table in the shade of a tree on the mall, sat Violet McGee, 85. She was patiently painting a flower still-life from a picture she had. “I’m here to show people the way,” she said.

Noon: There may have not been many people at the Glendale mall, but compared with the Woodbury University campus in Burbank, the mall was Grand Central Station. The campus was deserted, but signs pointed the way to the Women in Photography exhibit at a gallery that doubles as a boardroom.

It looked as if the exhibit was closed, but the door was unlocked and as it was pulled open the lights were suddenly switched on by a hidden sensor. The exhibit, which featured the work of seven photographers, could be viewed in uncommon quiet.

1 p.m.: The Valley Cities Jewish Community Center in Van Nuys was host for Center Members Create, an art show of pieces by members of the organization.

Some of the art was not in a style usually associated with Jewish artists. There were, for example, several bonsai trees on display and there were two large, colorful quilts by a group called the Hamish Amish Quilters (the “The Joy of Yiddish” defines a hamish person as one who is “unpretentious, cozy and warm.”).

One of the quilts was a tribute to American women, with panels celebrating the achievements of Gertrude Stein, Margaret Mead, Eleanor Roosevelt, Maya Angelou and several others. “It’s only our second quilt,” said a proud Ellie Sazer, one of the Hamish Amish.

2 p.m.: “What Is Man Without the Beasts” was an “ecological musical revue,” as the program called it, with a message.

The show, staged at the Richard Basehart Playhouse in Woodland Hills by the Planet Players Theater Company, began with a dance that was created for the Harmonic Convergence in 1987. Then a tall, long-haired man in tight jeans came on stage to lecture the audience about how the Indians had kept the land pure until the Europeans arrived.

In the background the air conditioner could be heard going full tilt.

2:40 p.m.: On the sincerity scale, members of the “Unlock Your Voice and Sing” workshops at Everywoman’s Village in Van Nuys got high marks. Facing the audience packed into a cottage, they took their turns at the microphone and sang their hearts out. The audience cheered them on as if it was a revival meeting.

Teacher Marcie Howard, who said she blends “psychology, metaphysics and voice training” in her workshops, called all her current students up to the stage at the end to sing a final number. At least half the audience answered her call.

3:15 p.m.: The Perfumes of Araby dance company began its short but lively performance with a procession through the crowd outside Everywoman’s Village. The exotically clad dancers then headed for a shaded area where they did most of their choreographed program of belly-dancing.

4:30 p.m.: Four actresses performed one-woman shows in the Collage of Women’s Movements, a program about the struggles of women at several points in history.

Deborah Marsh, who portrays union organizer Mary Harris Jones (best known as Mother Jones) in her monologue, played to tough conditions in front of the Creative Arts Center of the George Izay Park in Burbank.

Nearby, children laughed and cried as they played, cars with radios blaring pulled into the adjacent parking lot, a family set up a picnic at a nearby table and audience members adjusted their chairs periodically to try to stay in the shade of a tree near where Marsh performed.

The audience numbered 17, including other cast members and a man with a camcorder.

As the time neared 5 p.m., Marsh finished her impassioned program with three short statements. She looked out on the small audience, smiled and said, “Freedom is your choice. This is your country. God bless you.”