Ambar Ramirez
Words by Ambar Ramirez
April Brucker grew up like every young girl does. With a love for Barbie, “Sesame Street” and being told that a woman’s biggest accomplishment in life was to find an established husband (who was preferably rich, but who you loved despite that). In a little town outside of Pittsburgh, born and raised in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, Brucker was the weird kid with no cable TV. She sarcastically joked that she was very popular with the kids at her school when she shared that she didn’t know who Leonardo DiCaprio was. But when Brucker and her family got cable in her seventh grade, her life changed. And it had nothing to do with finding out who Leonardo DiCaprio is.
“When I was in seventh grade, we finally got cable so one night we’re watching the high school football scores because my brother was playing. They had the local sports station, and my dad was not thrilled about getting cable, but whatever so we’re changing the channels because my dad hated commercials and during the channel changes there was an Edgar Bergen tribute special, and Edgar Bergen is a famous ventriloquist,” Brucker recalled. “My family members tried to talk like the ventriloquist and because I had my great grandma’s sideways Irish smile, I was the only one that could do it. That Christmas my mother got me a Groucho Marx doll.”
Brucker went on to live a fairly normal life, as normal as a life one can have with a knack for ventriloquism and a love for puppets. See, ventriloquism wasn’t just some silly little hobby for Brucker, nor was it the one thing that she was better at doing than her family gathered around the TV. It was something she saw herself being very successful in.
Call it whatever you want, fate, destiny, lucky draw of the cards but Brucker’s sideways Irish smile and Groucho Marx doll was only the beginning of Brucker’s journey with ventriloquism and her puppets.
At 15 Brucker was performing at local nursing homes. At 17, she had a children’s show “Storytime with April and Friends” that was broadcast in 36 states, six countries and the World Wide Web in which she read children’s bedtime stories along with her puppet Sweetie Pie (Sweetie Pie is four years old and would do anything to have a pet alligator). She also became involved with her local public access station where she created and hosted multiple shows. One was “April Talk,” an interview-style program where she spoke with guests. And then there was “April Rock” where she interviewed and featured local rock bands. So Brucker really didn’t live that normal of a life.
But real success wasn’t calling her from small-town Bethel Park, on a local public radio station, on children’s shows, or in nursing homes; it was calling from the place where dreams come true — New York City. And so, Brucker ditched Pennsylvania. Bags and Groucho Marx doll packed up, Brucker made the big move.
“After I started doing ventriloquism with my Groucho Marx’s doll I was like I wanna do this for real,” Brucker remarked.
She sent out DVDs of these shows around the world and driven by a desire to take her craft further, she applied to NYU. Brucker was accepted into the Tisch School of the Arts. There, she got her BFA and studied under renowned instructors at both the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute and Stonestreet Studios.
Brucker was moving on up in the entertainment field, nothing could get in her way. Except for the trap so many young women fall for…love. Brucker often leans into the joke that she left her fiancé for her puppets, but this statement couldn’t be closer to the truth.
“You’re 25 so you get it, you know when you’re young, you’re meeting people you wanna find that special someone and everybody tells you, especially as a woman, your goals are great, but what’s gonna be really great is if you find a husband right? So you know, I was living the dream and I met this guy. I thought he was the one. I really thought he was the one,” Brucker shared. “And I was performing ventriloquism, and I was just kind of floating around, I mean I was like doing open-mic level stuff and he saw that I was passionate about it. And he says it’s me or the puppets. At first, I thought he was kidding, and then he put the burn on me, and he said my friends don’t like the puppets, was telling me how stupid people thought these puppets were. And I just was really heartbroken and I thought well, why would he lie to me? I thought, I really like him and this is something that is gonna be really hard to make a living off of so I put my puppets away and it was the most miserable year of my life.”
While Brucker’s puppets collected dust, she lost a piece of herself. She lost weight, became depressed and the relationship got worse and worse. Turns out, he wasn’t all that great, though we could have gathered that with the unfair ultimatum. He was a controlling narcissist and a cheater (are we surprised?).
“So anyway I go under my bed and I see my puppets collecting dust and I’m crying, I’ve lost weight, I’ve shut my friends out and I look at May Wilson (one of her puppets), and I actually put May on my arm and I started talking to her and I said, “May, I miss you” and what did you say May?,” Brucker said.
“Hi Ambar, I’m just gonna help tell this story. I said ‘I miss you too’,” May Wilson (the puppet) added. 
“And I said ‘May, what do I do?’,” Brucker continued.
“Tell him that you’ve chosen the puppets,” May Wilson replied.
In her heart, Brucker knew that May Wilson was right, after all, whose hand was guiding the puppet? That same night Brucker walked into the kitchen where her fiancé was with May Wilson in hand.
“May, what did you say?,” Brucker asked.
“Well, you see Ambar, I’d been collecting more [incoherent] than Kim Kardashian and not the fun kind, OK. So I walk into the kitchen and I say ‘Excuse me, April’s chosen, and it’s not you. Sayonara, loser,” May Wilson said.
That’s right, Brucker broke up with her fiancé in a more iconic way than the Post-it note. She broke up with him with the one thing he disliked most about April — a puppet.
“It felt so good to have him out of my life and it was the weirdest thing because he was gone, but I felt free and so that’s when I decided I had to be a professional ventriloquist, and I was gonna go up wherever they let me,” Brucker shared. “I performed at laundromats, comedy clubs, open mics, restaurants, flea markets, and we actually performed at a flea market where we had our photo taken and that’s how they found out about us on ‘My Strange Addiction.’”
A year after getting her photo taken at the flea market by a man that Brucker joked was handsome but had a girlfriend, she got a call from a production company out in Chicago. The lady on the phone was calling on behalf of TLC’s documentary-style show, “My Strange Addiction.” Was it true that you left your fiancé for puppets? The woman on the phone asked Brucker. She casually laughed and said, ‘Well, yes ,but there was much more wrong with the relationship.’ Two months later, they shot Brucker’s appearance on “My Strange Addiction.”
“Then the next thing I knew I was on “Entertainment Tonight.” And you know they represented one part of the story and that’s what typically happens with reality TV but on the flipside, I got to meet so many wonderful people not just fans and people that watched around the world but other ventriloquists,” Brucker said. “And so it tapped me into the bigger ventriloquist community.”
From local open mics and flea market performances, Brucker became a TV sensation. After the “Daily Mail” published a story about Brucker, she began receiving fan mail from around the world. The moment she received fan mail from India, she knew she had become viral.
“I’ve gotten calls from prisoners, I mean, maybe that’s my market,” Brucker joked.
Everyone has a turning point in their career and believe it or not, “My Strange Addiction,” being on “Entertainment Tonight” and being published in a “Daily Mail” article wasn’t it for Brucker. Because just like her many puppets that have many different personalities and background stories, it would seem that Brucker has just as many talents and adventures. And two moments in her life that felt like a pivotal turning point in her career.
The first moment that Brucker realized her life had turned a new leaf was when she was on the TV show “What Would You Do?”
“It was my primetime network debut and I knew that sounds weird, but it was,” Brucker recalled. “I’d filmed it and it was the only TV appearance in the world where I thought I was gonna get punched, and if you see the clip, that doorman was actually that angry because the homeless lady wasn’t an actress and he was on his break, saw me, and I was roasting her and so anyway fast-forward we’re on primetime TV.”
During her primetime TV debut, Brucker’s sister was moving into her new house with her husband who she married the weekend before. Brucker realized that her sister’s life could have very well been her own if she had stayed with her toxic fiancé. Instead she was happily making TV appearances with her puppets.
“It was like, you know what? Screw you, Sean, I can be a ventriloquist,” Brucker gloated.
The second moment was during the pandemic. It was March of 2020 and Brucker had just moved to Las Vegas to start her one-woman show “April Unwrapped.” Unbeknownst to the world and to Brucker, a contagious disease was spreading and shutting everything down. It’s important to note now that up to this point, Brucker had a packed schedule. She had gone to grad school, where she got an MFA in Creative Writing & Screenwriting from Antioch University Los Angeles. And was busy with “Murdered By The Mob,” the longest-running off-Broadway show in New York City. During all of this, Brucker’s manager, Clinton Ford Billups Jr., was on Brucker’s case to write her book.
“I was like I don’t have time, but all of a sudden, all I had was time,” Brucker conceded. “And so I wrote my book.”
In 2021, Brucker published a how-to book on becoming a successful ventriloquist called “Don’t Read My Lips!”
“I was like, wait a minute, I really did this for real. I have proven myself and I don’t have to prove myself anymore,” Brucker beamed.
Brucker has truly done it all, from TV specials to writing books to stand-up comedy to delivering singing telegrams for Betsey Johnson, Alexander Wang and the Saudi Arabian Royal Family to being on “The Wendy Williams Show” and to a Las Vegas residency. But through all this personal success, Brucker gives her puppets the credit. She claims to not be confrontational but with the confident, sassy and brash puppet May Wilson, Brucker had the guts to leave a toxic relationship and also release a song “Merry Christmas (I’m So Glad I Didn’t Marry You). She claimed to never have a footing in political comedy but with her puppet President Donald J. Tramp, Brucker has gotten the chance to get involved in the political climate, attend rallies and protests (often getting into political tiffs with supporters). And her puppets also open doors for her career-wise, like the new TV special dropping in August, “April Backstage.”
“I keep my creative fire alive with my puppets but also my wheaten terrier, Goldie. Goldie is just like every day, I’m grateful for that dog, I really am and she keeps me laughing and she lets me know not to take my work so seriously. And the thing is that I also keep doing new things. You know whether it’s “April Backstage” the special or the song with May Wilson or “April in Vegas.” You know, I always say that everything’s a stepping stone like when the UK Daily Mail did a story on me, and I went viral around the world from Iceland to India and yeah, I’m a celebrity in Guatemala. I say that I’m lucky, but I just focus on the work and where is the work gonna bring me,” Brucker shared.
With the power of her puppets, she can be whoever she wants to be.
“I also focus on having a life. Like my two nieces, you know, they’re experiments. I have a grill puppet named Gordy and they love the fact that Gordy burps and I’m, like, OK I’m keeping that. And they keep me laughing and I talk to my mom every day and I wouldn’t be doing any of this if it wasn’t for my mom,” Brucker stated. “So I always make sure that I have a real life that’s real.”
And maybe it’s through her puppets that we see Brucker’s truest self.
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