San Diego Rep’s longtime volunteer managing director stepping down

When San Diego Repertory Theatre was struggling during the Great Recession in 2008 and lost its managing director, board member Larry Alldredge agreed to volunteer in the position until it was filled. Thirteen years later, he’s still there and still working without a salary. But today, he has announced plans to retire.

An executive search firm has been hired to conduct a national search for his replacement, which could take three to six months. Alldredge will continue to serve until his successor arrives. He said that the pandemic — though devastating for artists and the company’s ticket sales — has been a boon for donations, grants and COVID stimulus funds to pay the staff. It also gave the company time to do the strategic planning necessary for a change at the helm.

San Diego Rep managing director Larry Alldredge photographed during the early days of the pandemic in 2020.

(Courtesy of Peggy Ryan)

“Since I came in, I’ve continuously thought when is the right time when the next person can run with it. The pandemic provided that pause,” said Alldredge, who is 60. “Unlike a normal year where we’re producing plays while planning new ones, we had time to actually get a year ahead in planning. We have 10 plays we’ve penciled in for the future, when normally we might have just five or six.”

Rep co-founder and longtime artistic director Sam Woodhouse said Alldredge, and his wife, Dawn Moore, have been a major part of the theater’s growth, stability and commitment to progressive theater-making over the past two decades. The La Jolla couple — who are both retired Qualcomm executives — are the largest individual donors in the theater’s history. Moore also served on the theater’s board from 2004 to 2017, the last two years as president.

Together, married philanthropists Larry Alldredge and Dawn Moore are the biggest individual donors in San Diego Repertory Theatre history.

(Courtesy of Tim Botsko )

Woodhouse described Alldredge as one of the smartest people he’s ever met, with a passion for theater, a willingness to embrace risk in the name of art and a full-hearted embrace of the company’s values.

“Larry is a one-of-a-kind managing director and a true hero of the arts in San Diego theater history,” Woodhouse said. “There are so many ways that Larry has made it possible for us to reach for our artistic dreams and climb to new heights of quality and inclusiveness.”

Asked to name his favorite shows over the past 13 years, Alldredge picked three that in some way helped move the company forward.

He launched a successful fundraising campaign for the ambitious, big-cast 2009 production of Bertolt Brecht’s “The Threepenny Opera,” a show Woodhouse had wanted to do since his college days but lacked the resources to produce. The Rep’s 2014 production of Greg Kalleres’ cutting-edge, race-themed play “Honky” was selected for the premiere episode of the PBS series “Onstage in America.” And for the 2014 production of Herbert Siguenza’s Latino riff on Shakespeare, “El Henry,” the company built an entire outdoor theater on a vacant lot in East Village.

“The Rep’s work appealed to my own progressive political and social values,” Alldredge said. “We consider progressiveness in the purest sense of the word, continually striving to improve the world we live in. We love using our art, not only to entertain, but also to provoke conversations on important social issues.”

San Diego Repertory Theatre artistic director Sam Woodhouse, left, with playwright Ali Viterbi, actor Ron Campbell, managing director Larry Alldredge and associate artistic director Todd Salovey during one of the company’s annual Lipinsky Family Jewish Arts Festivals.

Alldredge came to the Rep after what he jokingly called a failed effort at retirement from Qualcomm, where he served as vice president of technology from 1994 to 2007. Moore was vice president of engineering at Qualcomm from 1990 to 2004. Alldredge was in his mid-40s when he retired from the San Diego wireless technology firm.

“I guess I’m bad at retirement,” he said. “When I left Qualcomm it wasn’t that I didn’t love what I was doing. I just wanted to do more than one thing in life.”

Like his wife, Alldredge is passionate about theater, having first discovered it in kindergarten. In his teens, he was active in community theater, both onstage and behind the scenes designing scenery, sound and lighting. He and Moore were season subscribers and board members at the Rep before the theater’s board president asked him if he’d be willing to serve as “interim” managing director.

“When I told my mother about the job she said ‘be careful, I’ve been interim choir director at my church for 45 years,’” Alldredge said. “But it just clicked right away. I saw the company had so much potential and I saw how the skills I had could help it realize that potential.”

From 2008 to 2020, San Diego Rep’s annual revenue has grown by 175 percent, including an increase in contributed revenue of 115 percent. Rep officials said Alldredge’s philanthropy and leadership enabled the company to build a dependable infrastructure, all while the Lyceum Theatres and Horton Plaza have endured multiple construction and renovation projects.

Rep board president Larry Cousins has been attending shows at the theater since the 1970s and said that the period of growth the company experienced under Alldredge’s tenure was significant. Longtime Rep supporter Osborn Hurston also thanked Alldredge for his dedication.

“Larry has devoted a significant portion of his life to San Diego Repertory Theater and his energy proved much needed by the organization,” Hurston said in a statement. “Larry’s multifaceted work as managing director has contributed greatly to the long-lasting success of the Rep. He leaves huge shoes to fill.”

One of the theater’s most significant accomplishments in the past year was the creation of its Equity, Diversity, & Inclusion Strategic Action Plan, which, in part, calls for an examination of the eventual succession of the artistic and managing directors as opportunities to achieve representation for Black, Indigenous and people of color in senior leadership.

The company has hired Lee Kappelman and m/Oppenheim Executive Search firm to conduct a nationwide hunt for Alldredge’s replacement. Alldredge said the firm will begin its search by speaking to 350 arts leaders nationwide in the next several weeks. When the time comes to hand over the keys to his successor, Alldredge said he’s going to give retirement “my best shot,” with plans to travel with friends he and Moore have made through the Rep to places around the world that they’ve never been.

Once the Rep returns to indoor performances, hopefully next fall, Alldredge said he’s looking forward to attending shows as no more than a ticket-holder.

“I am going to love it,” he said. “I’ve always envied the audience members when they can just sit back and look at it and marvel at it and be a part of it.”