“He was so brilliant, so compassionate,” says Free Street creative director Anita Evans. “Everyone who met Abe knew he was going to change the world.”

Mendoza, 19 and a student at Bard College in upstate New York, fell to his death last Friday during a hiking trip with friends at Kaaterskill Falls near Hunter, New York. He had gone to the top of the 260-foot falls, the highest in the state, by himself and apparently lost his footing.

Mendoza and his younger brother, Alexander, were raised on the Northwest side by their father, Susano, after their parents separated. In an obituary by Andrew L. Wang and Becky Schlikerman for the Chicago Tribune, Susano Mendoza said that he “preferred [Abe] to be in the theatre instead of on the street or in the park.”

But theatre wasn’t the teen’s only interest. After graduating from Lane Tech in 2009, Mendoza attended Bard on a scholarship, majoring in photography and chemistry. His interest in chemistry and physics led his Free Street mentors and peers to view him as a “mad scientist,” and Free Street managing director Mica Cole told the Tribune, “For him the exploration of science was artistic.”

During his time at Free Street, Mendoza wrote and performed for many shows, including 2007’s Mad Joy and 2009’s Sub-Prime Youth. A monologue he wrote about Derrion Albert, the 16-year-old student at Fenger High whose brutal on-camera beating death shocked the nation, was a highlight of To Kill a Teenager: Seven Sins of the Juvenile Mind, this past winter.

Ironically, Mendoza’s own family had been caught up in the mortgage crisis in 2009 that sparked Sub-Prime Youth. His Free Street family has set up a memorial fund to help the Mendozas with expenses.

On Saturday, September 4, Free Street staff, artists, friends, and family will gather from 10 a.m. to noon at the theatre, 1419 W. Blackhawk, to honor the too-short life of this remarkable young man, and all are encouraged to bring “words, songs, photos, and memories.” Many of them will undoubtedly carry in their hearts the message that Mendoza wrote on a wall at Free Street before he went to college: “You are what you eat: so eat hopes, eat dreams and lives. Devour raw energy. Consume the universe.”