In memoriam: Rob Abe, longtime tech director at UH Hilo Performing Arts Center
From the scene shop to the sound board, Rob Abe influenced the course of countless performances not only in the Performing Arts Center, but in the whole community. His absence is deeply felt.
By Evangeline Lemieux/UH Hilo Stories.
Robert Abe, retired technical director at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo’s Performing Arts Center, died in a motorcycle collision on July 15, 2024. The crash occurred between Boulder, Colorado, and Lyons, Colorado, where Abe was visiting friends during his second trans-continental motorcycle ride.
Abe worked at the university’s Performing Arts Center for 30 years, retiring in 2021. As the center’s technical director, he contributed to 2,364 performances. In addition to his work at UH Hilo, Abe did sound design and effects for other productions both on campus and in the Hilo community. He touched the lives of many, and his passing came as a terrible shock to the Hawaiʻi Island performing arts community.
Prior to the accident that claimed his life, Abe was fulfilling his dream of traveling across the continental U.S. in a Ural motorcycle with sidecar, visiting beloved places and friends along the way.
“He was fulfilling his dream,” says Jackie Pualani Johnson, emerita professor and former chair of the UH Hilo Department of Performing Arts, about Abe’s cross-country motorcycle adventures. “You know, people talk a lot about their dreams but they never do anything about them, but he was doing what he really wanted to do and he was so proud of it.”
“He would send pictures from the road, he would visit friends, our students he taught through the years, so it was really a heart-filling choice that he had decided upon for his retirement,” says Johnson. “If it can be called a consolation, that’s the only consolation.”
It was apparent to his friends and former colleagues that the road trip adventure was a source of great joy for Abe.
“Every time I saw him, he’d pull out his camera and show me the motorcycle and tell me about his upcoming adventures,” says Justina Mattos, a UH Hilo associate professor of drama and current chair of the performing arts department. “He was really excited about it.”
Remembered not only for his technical skills, but also his character and personality
Before his career as tech director at UH Hilo, Abe worked doing lights and sound for rock musicians and other performances, and through this work he developed a variety of skills that were invaluable to the performing arts community.
“Through the years he was my go-to for everything, particularly for sound stuff,” says Johnson. “He would face something, if it was really a challenge, and he’d deal with it.”
After Abe’s retirement from UH Hilo, he continued to contribute his expertise in technical theater to different groups around the island, including the UH Hilo athletics department, Kamehameha Schools, Hālau o Kekuhi, and many more.
“A lot of people and organizations really counted on him and depended on his professional abilities,” says Mattos. “He was good at what he did.”
Mattos reminisces about Abe’s support during her first big production, Stew Rice, presented at the Performing Arts Center in 2002.
“I wanted gigantic postcards and big luggage trunks as my set, and he built me gigantic postcards and big luggage trunks that the actors could walk on and sit on,” says Mattos. “There was nothing I ever asked for that he said no to, in terms of technical theater crazy ideas.”
Lee Barnette-Dombroski, manager of the Performing Arts Center, worked with Abe for close to 15 years. In remembering him, she notes that through the long hours and close quarters found in the theater business, close relationships are built.
“In this business you spend more time with the people you work with sometimes than you do with your home family,” she says. “Those who worked with Rob remember not only his technical skills, but also his character and personality, which permeated the Performing Arts Center and all the projects he helped produce. He was one of the most generous people I ever met.”
“He enjoyed, I think thoroughly, sharing his knowledge,” Barnette-Dombroski says. “Rob did not have a degree in theater, and he maintained emphatically, continually, that he was not an artist — ʻyou want the art part, don’t talk to me,’ he used to tell me — but he knew his stuff, and he knew how to do it for the most part with a certain amount of joy.”
These skills were made abundantly clear over the course of his career, and the argument could be made that despite his assertions to the contrary, Abe was an artist after all, and an adept one. As such a vital part of a community that has produced so much art, how could he not be?
All who watched performances at the center during Abe’s tenure there saw his work, even if they did not know it. Lights, sound, and set design are not always noted consciously by the audience, but their importance cannot be overstated.
“His DNA is everywhere,” says Johnson, “he’s touched every little inch of the theater, from the pit to the tippy-top.”
From the scene shop to the sound board, Abe influenced the course of countless performances not only in the Performing Arts Center, but in the whole community. His absence is deeply felt.
Rest in love, Rob. You are missed.
Story by Evangeline Lemieux, a UH Hilo alumna (Medical Anthropology and English, 2024). While an undergraduate at UH Hilo, she also studied performing arts, participated in several productions and events at the UH Hilo Performing Arts Center, and was a writer at UH Hilo Stories.
