Amica Hunter in Anatomica, Edmonton Fringe 2023. Photo supplied.

Anatomica: A Comedy about Meat, Bones & The Skin You’re In (Stage 22, Holy Trinity Anglican Church)

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

At a pinch you could call Anatomica standup. Maybe. In their weirdly captivating solo comedy, Portland’s Amica Hunter seems to invite that thought in their easeful, funny, disarming way with the audience. Literally dis-arming, actually, since Anatomica peels away skin after skin, limb after limb, in an evolutionally exploratory downward spiral through bone and nerve, claw and pincher, till it arrives at the worm’s eye view of the world.

Standup? Well, in the off-centre entrance scene of the Fringe, the star of the show does arrive onstage sitting, scooching backwards actually, self-propelled — legs only, no arms —  on a chair. This bearded person communicates to us by whispering in the ear of individual audience members with a long tube, and they pass it along.

Anatomica is a comedy masquerading as performance art masquerading as standup. The question Hunter asks us at the outset, as they strip off layer after layer to the skeleton suit level, and past, is “are we comfortable?” On the unforgiving chairs in a Fringe venue, unlikely. In our own skin, possibly unlikelier still. “Any pain today?”

And what ensues, is partly a confessional, humorous and good-humoured, of a life lived in a body with chronic pain, and the elaborate preparations it takes for that body to achieve repose. And partly Anatomica is the weird, seductive pursuit of “a wild question, a freak- person question” we might never have asked ourselves. There are three types of skeletons, we learn — exo- (crawfish) endo- (our human type), and “hydrostatic” (the kind worms have). What’s the best kind in which to exist?

Needless to say, this thought has all kinds of metaphorical, not say existential, resonances. Hunter, who’s the farthest thing from ponderous, leaves them with us, and so will I. But it’s also a science learning experience (if science lessons ever stepped outside their own comfort zone and had empathetic charm and a sense of humour).

Hunter’s muse works in original similes. The directionless scuttle of her aquatic pet, a coconut crab, is “like a cheap pick-up truck with no shocks.” Its mouth was “like you cracked open a grandfather clock.” And they’re ready to demonstrate life forms accordingly.

There’s a funny sort of category-resistant brilliance about this strange, reflective piece.