I've made some progress--creating the array but not yet able to extract elements out of it.
I created a formula and hid it in the report header as follows:
shared stringVar array RefArray := split({vView.vectorOf31Elements},",",31);
This probably doesn't need to be a shared variable.
In any case, I now want to reference each element via a formula and place the formula in the page header or detail section as a separate control. The name of the shared variable doesn't show up anywhere on the design screen, possibly because it isn't defined until runtime. Can I just reference it by name, as in: formula = RefArray[1] and expect it to be picked up at runtime?