Scarsdale Resident Performs With John Astin At Johns Hopkins University

One Scarsdale resident and college junior took the stage with actor John Astin this month.

Oliver Roth, a junior majoring in Psychological & Brain Sciences with a minor in Entrepreneurism & Management at Johns Hopkins, recently performed with actor John Astin in a play on campus. The Theatre Arts and Studies Program presented the world premiere of Legion on March 9.

In Legion, a complex and driving legal thriller, a drug dealer is in the hospital, a teenage honor student is in jail, and the service organization the student started is under siege. Who is telling the truth?  And who – and what – is Legion?  The cast includes 13 undergraduates who perform alongside renowned actor John Astin, a Johns Hopkins alumnus who leads the theatre company and is director of the university’s Theatre Arts and Studies Program.

Legion was written by nationally acclaimed, award-winning playwright Nicky Glossman. He is the author of Professional, which was performed by Edward Asner and Jay O. Sanders; and Devil, winner of the 2011 Samuel French Inc. Young Playwriting Competition. The director is James Glossman, the playwright’s father, and a longtime faculty member of the Theatre Program.

The Theatre Arts and Studies Program is celebrating its 10^th season, eight of them in the historic Merrick Barn. On December 3, 2011, in recognition of Astin’s 10-year anniversary of teaching, acting and directing at Johns Hopkins, the university named the recently renovated theatre in the Merrick Barn after the noted actor and teacher.

Astin is best known for the role of Gomez Addams on the television show The Addams Family. After a year as a graduate student at the University of Minnesota following his 1952 B.A. in Drama from Johns Hopkins, Astin spent the rest of the decade in New York on and off Broadway.  His first big break in film came with a part in West Side Story in 1961. His talent for comedy led him to roles in numerous television sitcoms and motion pictures. He received an Academy Award nomination for Prelude, a short film he wrote, produced and directed. Astin returned to Johns Hopkins in 2001 to teach acting and directing and to restore the undergraduate Theatre Program.

-Contributed by Johns Hopkins.