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SEPTEMBER 11, 2025
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Showtime: Theater group builds Williston venue BY JASON STARR Observer staff
Imagine, Williston’s own little black box theater. Michael Fidler and Connor Kendall did, and they have found just the spot. At the start of the Vermont Repertory Theatre’s third season, the nonprofit theater group has found a home, tucked away in a corner suite of a building on Commerce Street. It’s a dead-end road with an eclectic mix of businesses, including an ice cream manufacturing facility and scoop shop, a veterinarian office and a chimney parts manufacturer. The theater suite has a performing arts legacy; it was once home to an Irish dance school. “We had just started looking for a space and this place came up and we said, ‘oh wow, it’s perfect,” said Chloe Fidler, the group’s treasurer, administrator and a performer. The Vermont Repertory Theatre started in the summer of 2023 with a presentation of Shakespeare’s “A Comedy of Errors” at the Isham Barn in
Chloe Fidler is working to build out the Vermont Repertory Theatre’s new headquarters and performance venue on Commerce Street. OBSERVER PHOTO BY JASON STARR
Williston. It has returned to the barn each summer since — “Spamelot” in 2024 and “The Miser” in 2025. Next summer, it plans a two-weekend presentation of “Shakespeare in Love.” The barn has been a reliable summer venue for the group, and in the winter, it has performed at Main Street Landing in Burlington. Rehearsals have taken place at Williston Federated Church. But the Commerce Street location can be an all-encompassing headquarters: a rehearsal space, performance theater, prop storage and board meeting room. “To be able to rehearse in a space where you can have your props and your set, and they just stay there, you don’t have to bring things into every rehearsal and take them out again — it’s a total gamechanger for us,” said Fidler, wife of Mike Fidler who co-founded Vermont Repertory Theatre with Kendall. The performance space can seat 75, but it’s still in its infancy. It will make its debut see THEATER page 4
Vermont English Bulldog Rescue dispute settled in court Dog rescue sets up shop on Merchants Row BY JASON STARR Observer staff In a way, the story of the Vermont English Bulldog Rescue is a lot like that of the orphaned dogs it serves. No longer wanted in its home neighborhood, it endured a
costly, stressful relocation to a new home where it can now grow and thrive. Its journey from a home-based nonprofit on Lamplite Lane into the former Masonic lodge on Merchants Row involved town zoning violations, development review board edicts, environmental court rulings, one Vermont Supreme Court decision and — finally — a signed agreement that should settle a
yearslong dispute with its neighbors. “We let the process play out and this is where we ended up. And we’re okay with it,” said Lamplite Lane resident Ron Bliss, a de facto spokesman for a group of neighbors who objected to the way the dog rescue was being run out of the nearby home of its founder Dawna Pederzani. “This is a compromise that all sides can respect,” affirmed
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Pederzani’s attorney, Christian Chorba. The agreement, which includes the signature of the Town of Williston’s attorney David Rugh, was accepted last Wednesday by Vermont Environmental Court Judge Thomas Walsh. It details specific restrictions on the way the Vermont English Bulldog Rescue can operate in and around Pederzani’s home.
The nonprofit has operated out of the home since 2010, rescuing homeless dogs from out of state and adopting them off to people in Vermont. As the operation grew, neighbors began to object, prompting the town’s zoning office to issue zoning violation notices. “We were getting these massive traffic jams and people walking all see DOGS page 5