How did one of Modesto’s top performing companies begin? Not like you might think

If you’re telling the story of Modesto Performing Arts, a community institution for five decades, you’re really telling the story of Paul Tischer.

Because Paul Tischer is Modesto Performing Arts.

But the story didn’t start out as one might expect for a theater company. It started in wood shop at Modesto High School.

Yes, wood shop.

Tischer, 84, majored in drama at San Francisco State College, graduating in 1965 with a minor in wood shop. He said he went that route so he would know how to build sets in his planned future career of leading stage productions.

But finding a job as a drama teacher wasn’t easy because schools wanted people who also could teach English classes – not an option for him.

So when the San Francisco native found a job listing for a wood shop teacher in a town he’d never heard of, he applied. “I took a Greyhound bus to Modesto” to interview, Tischer said.

Days later, he started his new job at Modesto High School at the age of 27. But he told the principal he would stay only one year because teaching drama was his goal.

During that year, Tischer was called into the principal’s office, where he was offered something unexpected and life-altering – the opportunity to take over the school’s drama department the following spring, 1966.

“I was there for a very long time and I enjoyed it,” Tischer said of his 45 years before retiring from Modesto High.

Teaching drama at the school led to the establishment of Modesto Youth Theater, the precursor to Modesto Performing Arts.

“By 1968, a number of students had graduated ... and they said they wanted to do shows in the summer,” Tischer said. Once he got the OK from the administration, MYT put on its first production, “The Boyfriend.”

“It was supposed to be a one-time-only summer thing,” he said. “After the performance, they came to me and said, ‘Mr. Tischer, what are we going to do next year?’ So we did ‘West Side Story’ in 1969.”

It was a hit, he said. “At the end of that show, they said, ‘Mr. Tischer, what are we going to do next year?’”

So he sought shows with a lot of children in the cast and decided on “Oliver!” for 1970.

And on it went.

For the first three years, MYT did one show a summer. But by 1971, there were so many people who wanted to perform, Tischer decided to present two productions each summer. “And that’s pretty much the way we’ve kept it through now,” he said.

A change in summer school in the 1970s, he said, meant MYT no longer could be an educational program.

“Now we had to be out on our own,” Tischer said. So the nonprofit Modesto Performing Arts was born in the late 1970s, open to people of all ages.

“(MPA) became a full amateur theater with kids and adults,” he said.

Shows still were performed in the Modesto High School auditorium, which opened in 1953 as a voter-approved civic auditorium seating 1,200 people, according to Tischer. “That’s why it’s so large.”

It’s since been renamed the Paul F. Tischer Theatre.

MPA moved its productions to the Gallo Center for the Arts in 2010 and became a resident company there.

“The Gallo Center has been a wonderful place to perform and their staff has been so helpful,” Sheri Stambaugh, current president of MPA, said.

Stambaugh called Tischer “an incredibly gifted director. ... I’ve learned a lot watching the process ... from audition to end product. It’s just amazing.”

He’s also “very, very good with children. He’s very patient with them, she said. “He enjoys that enthusiasm that they have.”

Tischer is hands-on with the entirety of MPA productions, Stambaugh said, including lighting, sound and sets – but also gives others opportunities to learn.

Community collaborations

Modesto Performing Arts has collaborated with other local companies over the years.

Central West Ballet Artistic Director Rene Daveluy has done choreography for MPA’s “West Side Story,” “A Chorus Line” and other shows.

“Rene is just outstanding, he’s very talented and wonderful to work with,” Tischer said.

Tischer himself has been part of Central West Ballet, playing Drosselmeyer in productions of “The Nutcracker,” according to Daveluy.

“I first collaborated with Paul on the MPA production of ‘Billy Elliot’ in 2017, which was a first for MPA that year,” Daveluy said in an email interview. “The experience was wonderful and Central West Ballet provided the students necessary for the school scenes in the production.”

Daveluy performed as Mr. Braithwaite in that show. He had the lead role in MPA’s “A Chorus Line.”

Working with Tischer “can be an intense experience,” Daveluy said. “Paul is very specific about the way he runs rehearsals, and when you are a performer in his productions, you are handled with enthusiasm but also with an iron grip. Paul expects a lot from his performers, but that is because he expects a lot from himself.”

Daveluy noted Tischer’s impact on many performers who have gone on to careers in entertainment – including performing on Broadway.

MPA also has collaborated with Opera Modesto, now led by General Director Roy Stevens, a professional and international opera singer who performed under Tischer.

Stevens “was a former student at Modesto High,” Tischer said. “I trained him well.”

Stevens said he was a fifth-grader for his first show with MYT.

When the company produced “Oliver!” it “needed a lot of boys,” he said. “I started doing shows each year, every summer ... 14 shows over the years.”

But MYT never gave Stevens a singing role because he didn’t have the voice for it, he said. What it did give him was a Modesto Youth Theater scholarship at the end of his last year with the company.

The $50 scholarship could be used only for fine arts lessons, Stevens explained in an email. The money paid for his first voice lessons, which he “would never have taken without that scholarship because I had no overt talent or interest in a performing arts career. But I found out that my not good natural voice could be trained, and that unexpectedly became my personal Mt. Everest.”

He eventually performed leading roles in more than 20 countries in 14 languages, from Italy’s La Scala to New York’s Metropolitan Opera.

Stevens called Tischer “the king of his domain, a benevolent dictator.”

“Touched the lives” of many

“I love how he’s touched the lives of tens of thousands of young people here,” he said.

Stevens produced a 50th-anniversary concert for MPA, and “everyone who got on stage wanted to talk about how life-changing the experience had been for them,” whether with Modesto Youth Theater or Modesto Performing Arts, he said.

Stevens has performed once with Modesto Performing Arts – the lead male in “South Pacific” in 1997.

“That was great,” he said. “It was a real coming-full-circle moment for me” because Stevens was in the chorus for a Modesto Youth Theater production of that same musical.

“It’s been a fun process being the little punk in ‘Oliver!’ and then growing to being respected by Paul Tischer and then becoming friends,” he said.

Other notable people who passed through MYT or MPA also have had successful careers in the arts.

Jeremy Stolle went on to perform on Broadway, including the titular role in “Phantom of the Opera.”

“He’s very talented and just a wonderful person,” Tischer said of Stolle.

In a 2017 story in The Bee, Stolle noted the importance of MPA in his life: “When I started performing during summers at Modesto Performing Arts, I knew this is what I wanted to do and I worked every day to get it.”

Modesto native Tricia Paoluccio, who also has performed on Broadway and recently wrapped an international tour starring as Dolly Parton in her own production, said in a 2025 interview that she performed with MPA in the 1980s.

Emmy Award-winning casting director Robert Ulrich also performed with Modesto Youth Theater and called Tischer “a huge influence in my life.”

“There are others out there that I’m simply not aware of,” Tischer said. “That’s one of the things that’s our mission as a community theater, is to give them that experience when they audition for professional shows.”

“Born into it”

Tischer’s own experience came at a young age. Theater was the only thing he ever wanted to do.

“I was born into it. I know that sounds silly, but going back to age 7 or 8, I was always interested in the theater,” he said. “I didn’t have a choice. That was it.”

But musical theater wasn’t part of his original background.

The first show he directed at Modesto High was “My Fair Lady,” a musical that already had been selected before his arrival.

“I had no musical theater background prior to getting the job in Modesto. It chose me, I didn’t choose it.”

But musicals quickly became his favorite. “I love the music, I love the stories,” he said.

At the top for him is “West Side Story,” which the company has performed several times over the years. “I think it’s the greatest musical ever written,” Tischer said.

The show has been a big success for MPA, often selling out the 450-seat Foster Family Theatre at the Gallo Center.

In addition to its two summer shows, MPA has been producing Christmas shows such as “A Christmas Carol” every few winters, as well as some children’s shows, he said.

“People like what we do, and we enjoy performing for them,” Tischer said. “My job is to do shows that make people happy ... I think we’re pretty successful.”

Coming up this year will be “Fiddler on the Roof” and “Mary Poppins,” the latter being one of the few musicals Tischer said he has yet to direct.

Running the nonprofit

Tischer also is treasurer for Modesto Performing Arts, which has a roughly $100,000 annual budget that’s funded through donations and grants, he said. “It’s the donations and grants that make us survive. We cannot survive on ticket sales.”

The company has to pay for licenses to have the rights for shows it produces, which generally cost around $10,000 each, he said.

MPA also has to hire choreographers, music directors, costumers, scenery builders and the like.

E.&J. Gallo Winery provides MPA with a large grant each year, and the theater company gets smaller ones from other local businesses and the public.

“We’re always looking for new grants, donations, sponsorships from local businesses,” he said.

So what has kept Tischer dedicated to MPA for so long?

“I love what I’m doing. To me it’s not a job, it’s something I love doing,” he said. “Like I said, I was born into it. I’m happy (when) I can make the audience happy, so they leave the theater higher than a kite.”

He said he enjoys listening to audience reactions. “They just enjoy being part of the shows ... forgetting their everyday problems and just watching and having a good time.”

As for the future of MPA, the show will go on, he said, with its two annual summer performances and occasional Christmas productions.

And Tischer plans to be at the helm. When asked if he has any thoughts of retirement, his answer was quick and decisive.

“No thoughts at all.”