‘Scuba’ actress Stephanie Reedy nurtured her craft in Winnetka, Wilmette

Luck wasn’t with Stephanie Reedy and Jacob Vaus the afternoon in 2020 when they decided to hit a California beach; they couldn’t find a parking space. So they decided to make a movie.

Well, the reality was a bit more complicated and Reedy, a Winnetka native whose love of theater and comedy took her from New Trier High School to theater and film school, still can’t hide her happy surprise about “Scuba,” the full-length film that grew out of that parking situation. 

Even before the whirlwind that took Reedy, Vaus and their team from concept to final cut, Reedy’s trajectory was probably always aimed at performance and its attendant creative urges.

Growing up as the one singleton in Emily and Bill Reedy’s family of five kids — she has both twin sisters and twin brothers, all her elders — Reedy remembered wanting to do whatever they were doing. That included acting in plays at the Winnetka Community House, she said, remembering one in particular.

“It was a production of ‘High School Musical Jr.’ I think my brother was maybe in fifth grade and I was in third grade, and they made up a character for me,” she said.

Eventually, she decided that she liked the stage herself, not just because others in the family were doing it. By the time she hit high school at New Trier (“it was right across the street from us; very convenient”) she had already been taking classes since middle school at the Actors Training Center in Wilmette. 

“I love them over there. I think I was registered in one of the first classes they ever had, in 2009, and I never stopped until I graduated high school. It was home base for me,” Reedy said. 

She gravitated toward ATC’s improv and sketch comedy classes. She said it seemed to come naturally to her; as a 10-year-old, exploring both on stage didn’t seem nearly as frightening as it apparently was for many adults. 

Reedy gravitated as well to the atmosphere she felt in and around stage productions, saying, “I fell in love with the onstage moments, and the rehearsal and the community that happens with a play, and making amazing friends out of it. It felt like I found my place and my people.”

Next steps

By the time she graduated from New Trier, she knew her future would be onstage in some fashion. She also knew her parents would support that decision; she joked that they supported any decision she made, “as long as it was reasonable. Theater is not necessarily reasonable, but I think, being the youngest, my siblings got some of the drama out of the way for me. (My parents) were like, ‘Great, all she wants to do is go to acting school, let her do it.’”

Reedy auditioned at several theater schools but found her way to the theater program at Chapman University in Orange County, California, entering as a freshman in the fall of 2017, just months after high school graduation.

There, she discovered Chapman’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts. Once again, she felt as if she’d found a home, because of the close relationship the theater program had with the film school.

The classes she took at ATC in on-camera work and auditioning helped make her more comfortable with the film and film acting process than many students might have been. In fact, her acting style might have been molded specifically for film, she joked. 

Chapman and Dodge’s collaborative ambiance allowed students to work on film projects as early as freshman year, something that theater students at larger universities might not get to experience until their junior year, Reedy said. 

From pandemic to feature

Reedy called herself a pandemic university graduate, since her last year at Chapman was 2021. And that was part of what led to the fateful conversation she had with Vaus, a university colleague and close friend. 

“A lot of friends of mine, and Jacob, who wrote and directed the movie, we were all feeling what the pandemic was doing. I wasn’t going to get to do a senior showcase, he wasn’t going to make his thesis film, because of pandemic guidelines,” she said. 

When some pandemic strictures loosened, Reedy and Vaus decided to take the plunge with the feature. Much of their team — Reedy estimated about 10 to 15 — were fellow Chapman students. She, Vaus and film co-star Jonathan Middleton had all worked with each other on the Chapman improv team. Vaus, who Reedy said is a visually oriented writer, saw Middleton and her as the stars of his story about two high school kids, one an annual theater reject (Reedy) and the other (Middleton) a disaffected student who decide to put on their own guerrilla theater project, and navigate a sometimes difficult new relationship. 

Did they have any idea of what it would take to create a feature-length movie? Reedy said that while she, Vaus, and the rest of the cast and team were familiar with creating short and student films, “I think we went in blissfully unaware of what we were getting ourselves into … I think the blind kind of faith we had took us along.

“I think it was bravery and naivety. It’s sort of like, no one told bumblebees they couldn’t fly.”

Their scrappy team worked their network of friends and acquaintances for support of all kinds, including financial; the latter came from several crowdfunding efforts, but also from family. Reedy said they pitched the project to her parents, who in addition to monetary support, became executive producers. 

Vaus’ father, who was the mayor of Poway, California, near San Diego, helped immeasurably, Reedy said. They shot much of the movie in Poway, and Vaus’ father helped them to get some local media coverage and more financial support. 

Ultimately, the biggest driver was everyone’s determination to bring Vaus’ vision to life, she said: “He’s a phenomenal writer and director. I think he has a fascinating and amazing brain and eye.”

Reedy read Vaus’ script in December of 2020, and filming took place in June and July of 2021. Shooting wrapped up the day before the film school graduation took place. People hadn’t slept for as many as 10 days, Reedy said. 

“Everyone drove to Orange County together and graduated and walked the stage in a fog,” she said. 

On the big screen 

After a long post-production period, “Scuba” came to final life. 

(Reedy said the film’s title has been the subject of conversation almost from the beginning: “It’s one that I’m not sure has a super clear answer. There is a scene in the film between Don and his mother [Rahkiah Brown] in which they’re playing a word game and both land on the word “Scuba”. I think the general idea is that the characters feel underwater emotionally, and there’s some water theming in the film.”)

“Scuba” premiered at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood, which Reedy said was incredible. She was in a Mother’s Day Zoom call with her family when Vaus called to let her know that, “So I got the best Mother’s Day news to give them!” 

The next step was to send the film to every film festival they could find, and hope it might be picked for showings. Every acceptance was a victory, she said. Still, the level of critical acceptance “Scuba” generated amazes her.

At the 2023 Tampa Bay Underground Film Festival, it won the award for best feature film; it was a semi-finalist in the 2023 Rhode Island International Film Festival; and Vaus won the award for best directorial debut in the FilmHaus festival at the Berlin Film and New Media competition.

“In Berlin — that was so crazy! Who in Berlin was watching our little indie movie?” Reedy said.

How to watch

Reedy, Vaus and their team also won distribution rights for “Scuba”; it’s available for streaming on Amazon Prime, Tubi, Google TV, Fandango, Vudu and DirecTV, and is also available as a DVD from Barnes & Noble, Target, Walmart, Amazon and the MVD shop.

Reedy said she would like to continue acting and producing, but she’s also keeping busy in Los Angeles with commercial work while she revisits one of her first loves.

“Comedy, improv … that’s still very much what I feel most confident in,” she said. “I do some standup in LA just to keep up. That’s scary, but it’s one of the few ways to kind of put yourself as a performer out there, where you don’t have to count so much on other people.”

“Scuba” will remain the project that allowed Reedy to see a vision and help bring it to life, she said. 

And that’s not a bad way to get over the lack of a beach parking spot.

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