May 24 - Based on historical events, the 75-minute work traces the lives of Simon Rodia and Tressa Prisbey. Rodia, builder of the Watts Towers, is reviled by bureaucrats as a hoarder of garbage, yet hailed by artists and scientists as a man of genius. Prisbey, in order to shelter her collection of 17,000 pencils, builds houses of bottles in her backyard, each with a unique pattern of shapes and colors, all glowing in the sun. The inspired, lonely efforts of these brilliant folk artists propel a comic tale which slyly comments on our own longings and aspirations. The story lends poignancy to the mixed receptions artists receive in our workaday society. In celebration of the two artists’ obsessive visions, all media -- music, theater, puppetry, painting, sculpture, poetry, photography -- are put to use in this equally driven, multilayered opera of ideas.