In a nautical region such as this, rare are those who need be told the meaning of the compass rose, the directional focal point of maps and nautical navigational charts. More ethereally, you’ll find it’s also known as “a Rose of the Winds” that “represents spiritual direction, awakening, and discovery.” Its directions “represent infinite possibility, the present, the past, and the future.”
Isn’t that what live theater does, too? Just ask Lucinda Merry-Browne, the founding artistic director of the nonprofit Compass Rose Theater, now celebrating its 10th anniversary year in Annapolis. Merry-Browne has aspired to it, acted and directed in it, and taught it, ultimately seeing how theater can positively impact students.
After having trained at the Pittsburgh Playhouse, Merry-Browne graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York and received a degree in English from Duke University, Magna cum Laude after having completed two years at Wellesley College, where she had maintained a near-perfect grade-point average. Most notably in this area, Merry-Browne graduated from Leadership Anne Arundel and is on the Performing and Visual Arts Advisory Board of Anne Arundel County.
Dedicated to teaching the dramatic arts, she founded the federally-funded Merry Company while acting in Washington and engaged in introducing D.C.-area senior citizens to drama programs. Locally, she has taught drama to high school students at the Round House Theater, Archbishop Spalding High School, the Maryland Hall for the Performing Arts, and Anne Arundel Community College.
In a recent interview with What’s Up? Media, Merry-Browne discussed the evolution of what is becoming an institution here, Compass Rose, and how it has survived—number one without making a “profit,” and ultimately with all the other businesses lately weathering the public idleness caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
“We might be unique to Annapolis, but we’re not unique to professional theater,” she stresses. What became known as the regional-theater movement started in the 1950s during a migration of actors, directors, and producers who had “done theater” in New York City and branched out into other areas of the country. It was every bit as professional, she notes, “as what you could find in New York,” excepting one crucial feature: “Broadway is ‘for profit’ theater. You find a producer, the producer funds the play, and they try to make a profit on the show.”
Now nearly seven decades after the movement started, Merry-Browne recounts that, “regional theater was this whole new idea. It depended on people to support the theater with donations and grants and government funding. It began as an experiment and started with the Alley Theater in Houston, Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, and the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, to name a few.”
And that is the model to which Compass Rose aspires. Getting into the specifics, Merry-Browne emphasizes that “We are a nonprofit professional theater, which means that everybody who works there is paid. These are career professional actors, designers, and staff, not an amateur theater, not a community theater. At a nonprofit like Compass Rose, the quality of the acting is higher, because they’re professionals. They belong to the union of professional stage actors.”
For Compass Rose, a subscriber membership base pays for discounted tickets to the shows, and the members ostensibly become loyal to the theater. In addition, Merry-Browne says, fundraisers and grants support such performing-arts organizations.
When asked about the general role of the audience, Merry-Browne reflects, “The most important thing for us is that the audience is affected by the play and even transformed by the experience of sitting in the theater. They leave with a new perspective. That’s really why we do live theater. It’s a kinetic, powerful, impactful art form.”
When asked what it takes to start a theater, as she did with Compass Rose, Merry-Browne admits that “I never intended to found a theater,” even though she’s done it five times in her career. “I just knew [in this case] there was a need in the capital city of Maryland to have professional one. There was no professional theater until I first co-founded the Bay Theater, which I left in 2010, then Compass Rose, which has a teaching mission as well. If you don’t teach children about it, there’s not going to be any theater.”
Merry-Browne, herself, has directed more than a dozen plays for Compass Rose, including “The Sound of Music,” “Romeo and Juliet,” “A Chorus Line,” and “Cats.” Of the latter, she says, “We had tremendous success on every level with our musical ‘Cats’ in 2014. On Broadway, they had the cats stalking in the aisles. We did even more. The cats were nose-to-nose with the audience. We were able to perform gymnastics, with people jumping from platforms with a big rope swing. So many people still remember that show’s excitement and dynamism.”
And she’s performed the leading roles in “Lost in Yonkers,” “Barefoot in the Park,” and “Look Homeward Angel.” Of her favorite roles she’s performed in all her years, however, she recalls, “I did Blanche Dubois in ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ back in the ’70s. Later in life I played Amanda in ‘The Glass Menagerie.’ I love Tennessee Williams.”
Ultimately, we wanted to know how the theater is coping with COVID-19: “We’re getting emergency funding from the state,” she admits, “because we couldn’t survive without it.” With plans to reopen in fall 2021, “unless things are still in terrible shape,” Merry-Browne emphasizes that “the real risk is to the actors, who have hand-to-hand and person-to-person contact. You really cannot rehearse with actors right now.” Her parting plea is, “It’s important that people support theater, and it’s especially critical at the present time. I think when the pandemic is over, people are going to flock back to the theater in droves. At least I hope so.”
The current managing director of Compass Rose Theater is Mary Ruth Cowgill who’s worked with Merry-Browne since 2014. Cowgill applauds her as “a genius at hiring the best actor for a role and finding innovative ways to stage plays and musicals. Lucinda is the reason Compass Rose is admired and celebrated in Annapolis and across the region.”
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