Company Personnel | Teaching Artists | Artistic Associates
LEADERSHIP TEAM
Barbara Webber
Executive Director
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
Madeline Austin has more than 20 years of experience in the theater as a director, producer, educator, and actor. She directed shows at Ensemble Studio Theatre’s Writer Lab, Manhattan Theatre Source, and Polaris North in New York. Locally, her work includes “Clue: On Stage,” “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” “Little Shop of Horrors,” “12 Angry Jurors,” and “Twelfth Night” for AACC Theatre. For more than a decade, Austin worked with Gerald Schoenfeld, Chairman of The Shubert Organization, which owns and operates 17 Broadway theaters. During that time, she was associated with dozens of Broadways shows while taking on other projects including producing the Off-Broadway run of Maybe Baby, It’s You (director Jeremy Dobrish); The Invested (director Ron Canada); Stealing Sweets and Punching People (director Michael Sexton) and the premiere of Spin Off (director Ron Canada). Passionate about Shakespeare, she led The Shakespeare Society as Executive Director for two years, overseeing large-scale events and fundraisers as well as the organization’s education programming. She also served on the Artistic Advisory Council for Naked Angels in NY. Currently, she serves as a creative advisor for Creative Women New York and as an adjunct faculty member at Anne Arundel Community College.
Lucinda Merry-Browne
Founding Artistic Director (retired)
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.