For decades, Eugene Blackman—known simply as “Prof” to his students and colleagues—brought musicals, drama, and comedy to life at Northeastern.

The professor emeritus of theatre, who chaired his department for a record twenty-two years, died in September at his home in Boynton Beach, Florida. He was eighty-one.

Blackman directed more than a hundred student productions at Northeastern. He came to the university in 1947 with a graduate degree from Boston University, where he’d helped found the drama club. Blackman worked his way from English instructor, to theater director, to professor of English and drama. He chaired the Drama, Speech, and Music department from 1960 through 1982. Through his efforts, music and speech became separate departments within the College of Arts and Sciences.

When he retired in 1988, Alumni Auditorium was renamed Blackman Auditorium in recognition of his long service to the university.

In 1952, Blackman’s first year as theater director, student interest in theater blossomed. “We built from a student population of five,” Blackman told the faculty/staff newspaper the Northeastern Edition in 1987. “By the end of the year, there were about two hundred and fifty students involved in extracurricular theater. The first show, we had maybe four hundred people in the audience. By the end of the year, we used to sell out every seat.”

Blackman demanded the best from students. Occasionally, when he thought they weren’t working their hardest in rehearsal, he’d walk away, and they’d have to beg him to come back. But his work ethic also generated respect. As Blackman’s wife, Edna, told the Boston Globe in September, “He was like the Pied Piper [to his students]; they followed anything he did because he was like a father to them.”

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