Bethel Park graduate gets noticed as a ventriloquist | Life & Culture

Take an entrepreneur turned artist turned politician, change a letter in his last name, and you get what Bethel Park native April Brucker came up with in the spring of 2016: Donald J. Tramp.

That’s the name of what was then the newest addition to the comedian-ventriloquist’s puppet family – she’s up to 21 these days – and a way to add lightness to what was. already become a controversial presidential campaign by the close namesake of the Tramp.

“What he was saying upset a lot of people,” she said in an interview nearly three years ago. “I thought if I made him a puppet, it would make him look more harmless.”

At the time, Brucker believed she would eventually pass the act of Donald J. Tramp, as she joined many pundits in believing that the Republican hope of reaching the White House was more than a long plan. .

The 2016 general election, however, gave her the impetus to continue and develop a one-woman show, “The Lady and President Tramp”. Brucker has performed it off Broadway and at festivals near her New York City residence, and she seeks to take it across the country and possibly on Canadian television.

“We have supporters of Donald J. Tramp. We also have protesters who admittedly did not vote, ”she said, adding:“ I want this to be fair. This is the raison d’être of democracy.

Beyond “The Lady and President Tramp”, Brucker is working on another show with Las Vegas audiences in mind:

“I have a new puppet that I’m developing, and he’s a magician. But he’s a very bad magician.

If that premise sounds familiar to you, consider Gob Bluth in “Arrested Development,” one of Brucker’s favorite TV series.

“I watched it to analyze it for comedy while I was writing the screenplay for ‘The Lady and the President Tramp’ for the Canadian production company,” she said.

She is also working on a script for the adaptation of her 2012 book, “I Came, I Saw, I Sang: Memoirs of a Singing Telegram Delivery Girl,” based on her actual experiences delivering sung telegrams in New York City.

On an academic note, Brucker is studying for his Masters in Creative Writing at Antioch University in Los Angeles. She received her BA in Drama from the Lee Strasberg Institute at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, after graduating from Bethel Park High School in 2003.

She is one of six 2019 Bethel Park Great Alumni Hall of Fame inductees, along with another comedian: Barbara Feldon, class of 1951, who, among other roles, played Agent 99 in the classic sitcom “Get Smart” .

“I think it’s pretty cool that I’m inducted with her and everyone else,” Brucker said. “She was one of the first women to be smarter than beautiful.”

For more information on April Brucker, visit www.aprilbrucker.tv.