M. Edgar Rosenblum, an arts executive who nurtured Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven into one of the most prominent regional house in America, died April 18, 2010, in Woodstock, NY. He was 78. Mr. Rosemblum came to the Connecticut theatre as executive director in 1970, when Long Wharf was just five years old, and stayed on until 1996. His artistic partner during all those years was Arvin Brown, the company's artistic director. While Brown handled the aesthetic choices, Mr. Rosenblum addresses every aspect of the business side of theatre. Together, they raised Long Wharf's profile, increasing subscriptions and budgets, and saw plays that began in New Haven — like The Gin Game, The Shadow Box and The Changing Room, and revivals of American Buffalo, A View From the Bridge and Watch on the Rhine — go to Broadway.

He was born Morton Edgar Rosenblum in Brooklyn on Jan. 8, 1932, and attended both Lafayette College and Bard College. He did some early producing work for the American Scandinavian Foundation and at the Woodstock Playhouse in upstate New York.

After leaving the Long Wharf, Mr. Rosenblum was executive director of Theater for a New Audience in New York. He was also executive director of a brief incarnation of Broadway's Circle in the Square run by Gregory Mosher in the late 1990s. At his death, he was executive director of the California International Theater Festival.

In addition to his wife, whom he married in 1960, he is survived by a daughter, Jessica, of Manhattan and Miami.