Meet the Artist: Grayson Buesing

Who are you? What year are you? What are your interests?

My name is Grayson Buesing, and I’m a senior here at Homestead. I enjoy any form of gaming, a good book, and quite literally any music from the 80s. I’m serious, it’s beginning to become a problem.

What exactly do you do for Alice in Wonderland?

In “Alice in Wonderland,” I play Tweedledum, the better half of the Tweedle brothers, a pair of twins who always end up bickering with each other or messing with Alice.

What brought you to join the cast for Alice in Wonderland??

“Alice in Wonderland” has always been one of my all-time favorite books, even keeping its spot to this day. The whole universe in general has always been appealing to me. The whimsy of Wonderland, the fantastical personalities of the characters, and the magical journey itself are all amazing aspects of the world inside Alice’s head. To be honest, there were times when I wanted to jump down the rabbit hole myself!

Do you have any stories from rehearsals?

Oh, I have plenty of stories. I can’t even begin to count how many times me and my Tweedlebro, Matthew, have accidentally smacked each other while working through our blocking. It’s always an incredibly hilarious happenstance, and a good portion of those moments actually end up in the show itself. Aside from that, there have been a lot of moments where the cast has connected with each other in a really meaningful way. There are times when we’ll all sing some random 90s song, nerd out over a TV show or book series, or just develop as many inside jokes as we can muster. The cast in this show is really special because it’s more tightly-knit than some of the other casts I’ve been in, which makes for a really dynamic group of people.

Alice in Wonderland is about a fantastical land with many famous characters and Alice who ventures throughout. How have you connected to the story?

This show can connect a lot of people, and I’m no different. There are a lot of times when I will find myself stuck between the reality that I’m stuck living in and a fantasyland inside my own head. The line “imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality” is what sticks with me the most, because there are times when I will want to just escape reality altogether. The best way I can do that is with my own imagination. But in the end, I have to return to the world that I know is real. A Wonderland can’t be wonderful forever, after all.

You are using a script that was created at Homestead in 2015, how have you changed it? What have you added or taken away?

There have been a good number of edits to the 2015 version of the script. Some of the big edits have been made to fit the show that we are creating, rather than us fitting to the script. Others have been made specifically for characters or scenes to make more sense in context. And others still have been made because, well, we wanted to. It could have been odd wording or lack of emotion or a whole bunch of different things. All of these changes that were made, however, fall under the same category: they were made to make the show unique to this group of people.

What’s one thing that is different in this play or rehearsal process than anything else we’ve done in the Homestead Theatre Department?

The one thing that I would think that this play does differently from other shows, and possibly the most important thing, is that it is made to be unique to us as members of the production. Having an original script, a vast array of characters, and the sky as one’s limit, this show can be shaped and molded into anything we want it to be. And as a cast, we did exactly that. We made this entire show solely unique to us and our preferences. You won’t see any other performance of Alice in Wonderland like this one, folks.

Anything else you want to talk about?

I am so grateful that I got the opportunity to perform with this group of people and in this show in my final year at Homestead. It has been such an incredible experience to work with you all in order to create a show that is ours and only ours…nohow!

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Homestead High School