Staff
Barbara Webber, Executive Director
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Barbara Webber is a long-time Annapolitan and public relations business owner with over 20 years of experience in nonprofit leadership, theater arts, and youth education.
Webber previously held leadership positions in organizations such as Habitat for Humanity, Adopt-A-Classroom, and Classcraft. Her company, Webber Professional Media Consulting, led communications campaigns for nonprofits, including, Artists Against Apartheid, the Hollywood Women’s Political Caucus, Greenpeace, women’s groups, children’s organizations, and represented many world leaders and causes. Her theater experience includes working with Colonial Players, Prince George’s Little Theater, Bowie Community Theater, Reston Community Theater, and North Beach Players. As head of a child abuse prevention program, she created and led educational performances throughout Maryland. She has been active in community outreach, spearheading food bank efforts and other projects for families in need. Acting is her passion, which she discovered in 5th grade, on stage and tv, and she won a best actress award for her portral of Catherine in The Foreigner at the Reston Community Players many moons ago! She has regularly been on stage and behind the scenes with many other local theater companies including “Bowie Community Theater, Second Star, Colonial Players, North Beach Players, Reston Community Players, and Prince George's Little Theater.”
Since joining our theater, she has produced several Compass Rose Theater productions that received Helen Hayes Recommendations, including The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee that received 7 Helen Hayes Award nominations.
Madeline Austin, Artistic Director
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Madeline has over 20 years of experience as a director, producer, arts administrator, actor and educator. As an Off-Broadway producer, her credits include Maybe Baby, It’s You, The Invested, Stealing Sweets and Punching People and Spin Off. Her producing skills were also honed over a decade working with the legendary Broadway producer Gerald Schoenfeld, Chairman of The Shubert Organization, on numerous Broadway productions.
Madeline has directed several shows in New York at Ensemble Studio Theatre Institute Lab, Manhattan Theatre Source, Theatre Ubet @ Abingdon Theater and Polaris North. She directed the recent “Helen Hayes Recommended” production of Little Shop of Horrors for Compass Rose and is looking forward to directing Pride and Prejudice. Other credits include Clue, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, 12 Angry Jurors, Little Shop of Horrors, Twelfth Night (AACC Theatre); and Final Respects (Actors’ Center Staged Readings).
During her tenure as the Executive Director of The Shakespeare Society, Madeline produced cultural events with artists, writers and directors such as Julie Taymor, Ralph Fiennes, F. Murray Abraham, Kate Burton, Michael Cerveris, Michael Cumpsty, Richard Easton, Peter Jay Fernandez, Oscar Isaac, Jefferson Mays, Tina Packer, John Douglas Thompson, Cicely Berry, Marjorie Garber and Stephen Greenblatt. She also designed and provided Shakespeare curriculum to schoolchildren and DOE teachers in New York overseeing programming that included Teaching Teachers, Shakespeare in Schools and the Hunts Point Children’s Shakespeare Ensemble.
Madeline is a classically trained SAG-AFTRA, AEA actress with a BA in Theatre Arts. She has numerous TV and film credits and was also part of the Folger Shakespeare Library’s touring company, “Bill’s Buddies.” She has trained with Wynn Handman, Joan See, Franchelle Stewart Dorn, Craig Wroe, and at the Folger Theatre, Studio Theatre and Arena Stage. She is also a graduate of the Commercial Theater Institute, former Artistic Advisor for Naked Angels NY, and is also a Creative Advisor for Creative Women NY (CWNYi). Currently, she teaches acting and Shakespeare at Anne Arundel Community College.
Lucinda Merry-Browne, Founding Artistic Director (retired)
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Lucinda Merry-Browne founded Compass Rose Theater in 2011 and built it from an acting studio into a teaching professional theater. She produced and directed 48 critically acclaimed productions, found and remodeled three theater locations, hired Equity actors and professional designers and built a thriving acting studio for students until her retirement in 2023. She created the theater's teaching mission and her drive to achieve artistic excellence in productions built a reputation for quality and professionalism, which the theater enjoys today. She retired from the theater in 2023 to give time and energy to her family but continues to be an advisor as Compass Rose Theater grows into the future.