Bethel Park native’s ventriloquist act parodies presidential candidate
And for her next number, ventriloquist April Brucker presents: Donald J. Tramp.
No, that’s not a typo. And yes, her dummy is based on the reality TV star who’s making a stab at a certain elected office.
“I was watching debate after debate after debate,” the Bethel Park native recalled, “and one of the things that stuck in my mind was that Donald Trump was the ventriloquist’s puppet of the Republican Party.”
Making a puppet talk has been her avocation since she was 13, so Brucker is familiar with the tradition of ventriloquist acts, from Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy to – on “The Simpsons,” at least – Arthur Crandall and Gabbo.
“It’s a puppet,” Brucker said. “It can get away with saying whatever it wants.”
She noticed that seems to be the case with the guy who tried to trademark the phrase “You’re fired,” and she decided to add to her extensive puppet collection with a new dummy.
Donald J. Tramp is an import, actually, from a puppet maker in Scotland. Of course, that’s part of the United Kingdom, the nation that has considered banning the person on whom the dummy is based.
Brucker launched her Tramp routine in March – you can check it out at www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVg4ufbYnrU – with gags that are based on the more outrageous elements of the candidate’s actual rhetoric.
“What he was saying was upsetting a lot of people,” she said. “I figured, if I make him into a puppet, that would make him seem more harmless.”
She has taken the orange-haired, squinty-eyed dummy to rallies for Democratic candidates, at which people have wanted to punch him as a substitute for taking a shot at the real deal.
“Some Trump supporters feel very strongly about the puppet, too,” she said, as she has received several hate notes from people who don’t take kindly to parody.
A 2003 graduate of Bethel Park High School, Brucker earned her bachelor of fine arts from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. She has made numerous TV appearances in the United States and Europe, including having her and her puppets featured on a 2011 episode of TLC’s “My Strange Addiction.”
The one-time youth writer for The Almanac also is the author of “I Came, I Saw, I Sang: Memoirs of a Singing Telegram Delivery Girl,” for which she returned to Bethel Park in 2012 to sign copies at a local bookstore.
Meanwhile, Brucker plans to keep Donald J. Tramp going at least throughout the presidential campaign, perhaps finding herself on the receiving end of the Republican frontrunner’s invective along the way.
“It will be the best publicity ever,” she said.