Anatomica: a comedy about meat, bones, & the skin you're in

International Comedian & Weird-Lil’-Gremlin, Amica Hunter (they/them), returns to Asheville for another captivating show after two sell outs at last year's festival. 

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a worm? You are not alone. Amica GETS UNDER YOUR SKIN and CRUSHES YOUR FUNNY BONE in this hilarious, captivating, and sometimes-unsettling-comedy about skeletal systems and the horrors of living in a body. ANATOMICA is an intimate, unpredictable exploration of zoological fascination, chronic pain, & the collective imagination. It is a show striving to answer one crucial universal question - What is the BEST type of skeleton?!?!?

With candidness and a comfortably casual tone, Amica reviews the three skeletal systems found in animals and discusses the pros and cons of each one. What would it be like to inhabit a body completely alien from our classic human form? A gloriously deranged Ted-Talk by a wanna be scientist who dropped out of college to attend clown school instead.

Featuring a guided worm meditation, a slew of scientific animal facts, a butt-faced crab, and communication with the audience via a long plastic tube, ANATOMICA is an absurd shapeshifting show that will leave audiences with more questions than answers.

Part stand-up, part storytelling, and part clown, ANATOMICA is an investigation of the inadequacies of different animal body models, and a celebration of the absurdity of being trapped in a body that is limited by pain, fatigue, and ultimately decay. But, you know, make it fun.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ (5 stars out of 5)

"Amica Hunter’s stand-up set disguised as a serious science lesson is like the mutant love child of Laurie Anderson and David Attenborough…ANATOMICA is an hour of chewy, fleshy charm.”

-The Edmonton Journal

-The Sappy Critic

“Biological, philosophical - both entertaining and thought-provoking.”

-The Orlando Sentinel

AWARDS:

• Pick of the Fringe - Artists’ Choice Award - Cincinnati Fringe Festival (2023)
• Edmonton Fringe Festival Official Holdover (2023)
• Spirit of the Fringe Award - Asheville Fringe Festival (2025)

Amica Hunter (they/them) is your basic multi-layered mammalian organism - a creaking calcium scaffolding, wrapped in wet pulsing blood tubes and layers of raw meat, all dipped in a skin coating and rolled in hair. Like some sort of effed up, sentient, caramel apple. An all-purpose weirdo and Creator of Things™, Amica’s interests include cute living creatures, cute dead creatures, bad movies, tree climbing, napping, pranking their gynecologist, and gluing baby doll limbs to shoes. Amica enjoys pointing out the absurdity of things we take for granted, and our arbitrary systems of judgment that so often value all the wrong things.

Amica dropped out of college to attend clown school, and spent the subsequent decade touring original award-winning slapstick comedy shows as one half of the acrobatic clown duo, A Little Bit Off. They also devise and perform shows with Bruce Ryan Costella under the moniker 2 Sleepy Ratguys. Amica is the co-founder and producer of an annual queer horror theatre festival in Portland, OR - The Stage Fright Festival, which showcases the original works of independent queer and trans artists in the horror genre.

They also run Funerals For Life, an immersive event service offering “fake funerals” to living customers, for celebrations such as birthdays and anniversary parties. Amica has a great love of rats, and has kept them as cherished pets on and off throughout their life. Their current crop of rodents are The Cheese Brothers: Monsieur Poirot, Shredder, and Monica II, and they are spoiled as hell. Needless, to say, Amica is VERY busy and they have a LOT of ideas.

TUBE TIED: 30 min double feature: “TUBE be, or not TUBE be?” IS that the question? Not really. Maybe? It doesn't really matter now, it’s too late. Behold! Amica approaches with a fistful of TUBES and a mouthful of WORDS, to give you an earful of SECRETS in this stand-up-lay-down squirm-around comedy set. It’s about secrets, it’s about cylindrical structures, and it TOTALY MAKES SENSE! 20+ time award winner Amica Hunter has “lost the plot” and seems to be “giving up” with this ridiculous anti-theatre “show” that is literally about literal tubes in the most literal way (...it has secrets in it, but is mainly about tubes). Like. What the f*ck!?!? - 30min version as part of a Fringe DOUBLE FEATURE show, March 19th & 21st at 9pm at LEAF Global Arts

WORKSHOPS: Clown Basics & Prop/Costume Work: Join Amica for two days of clown/performance workshops! Whether you're a seasoned performer, or aspiring to your stage debut, this is an opportunity to work on developing authentic connections and tools for creating work through a clown lens. We will work with play, presence, props, and practicality and at the end of it all, you're invited to perform a short act in a show (only if you want)! 3/25 & 3/26 3-6pm at Sly Grog

TUBE TIED: Full Length Premiere + Special Opening Acts: A Mind-Numbing Absolutely Horsehit “Show” About TUBES And Secrets… You may have seen the 30 min version in the Asheville Fringe, but there is So. Much. More. These TUBES, man, they go all the way to the top! Find out what the REAL secret is at this juicy full length version of Tube Tied, with a very with Special Opening Act... (Shhhh it's a secret.)