Camila Vinatea Brings Peru’s Amazonian Roots to New York in Serpent Woman

For Camila Vinatea, the journey to a New York stage began far from the theaters of Manhattan. It began in Iquitos, in the Peruvian Amazon, where she grew up in a place with few opportunities to encounter theater or the performing arts. Before there were stages, conservatories or formal acting classes in her life, there was simply a girl performing at home, discovering through acting a way to express herself and imagine another world.

That early connection with performance eventually led Vinatea from Iquitos to Lima, where she began pursuing acting more seriously through classes and conservatory training. She later continued her development in New York at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and after graduating in May, she began taking the next step in her professional career. Now she is bringing a deeply personal project to New York: Serpent Woman, a bilingual solo performance based on the work of Peruvian playwright Lita Baluarte.

The production, presented by Art Plus, marks the first time the play is being performed in New York. Vinatea serves not only as the performer but also as executive producer, while Jenny works as the production’s creative producer. The team has shaped the piece for an American audience without separating it from its Peruvian identity, allowing the story to remain firmly connected to the culture and experiences that inspired it.

Vinatea will perform Serpent Woman October 17 and 18 as part of the Frenzy Festival, followed by performances November 8 and 11 at the Gotham Storytelling Festival at FRIGID New York. The piece runs approximately 40 minutes, with Vinatea alone onstage throughout the performance. The work combines acting, movement and choreography, creating a physical language for a story that is as much about what happens inside the body as what happens around it.

At the center of Serpent Woman is a woman named Lita, referred to as “Her” in the script. She is 30 years old, has recently given birth and is newly divorced. Alone in her home, she begins to experience something strange happening within her body. Eventually, she gives birth to a serpent.

The creature is not simply a monster or an external threat. It becomes a physical representation of the memories, wounds and unresolved experiences that Lita has carried with her. The performance follows her confrontation with the serpent and, ultimately, with the parts of herself she has been trying to understand.

For Vinatea, that symbolism becomes particularly meaningful because the serpent is also an animal deeply associated with the Amazon, the region where she was born. Rather than presenting the creature only as something frightening, the production allows her to reconsider its meaning through her own cultural background.

“The music for me is something that is part of my culture,” Vinatea explains. “I was born in the jungle, and this music is very Amazonian. It has sounds of animals, and I feel very represented by it.”

That connection continues through the visual and physical language of the production. Amazonian music accompanies the performance, while movement and choreography help communicate experiences that cannot always be expressed through dialogue alone. The result is a solo performance in which the body becomes another storytelling instrument.

The serpent, too, gradually changes meaning for Vinatea. Growing up in the Amazon, she understands the animal through a cultural lens that goes beyond fear. “The serpent is an Amazonian animal,” she says, describing the connection she feels between the creature and ideas of life, wisdom and transformation. Through the character’s journey, she began to see the serpent differently—not simply as something to fear, but as a way of reconnecting with her own roots.

That idea is particularly important because Serpent Woman deals with difficult aspects of motherhood. The character has recently become a mother while also navigating divorce, emotional wounds and memories that have not disappeared simply because her life has changed. The production explores the complicated reality that motherhood can carry joy and love while also exposing unresolved trauma and difficult personal histories.

Vinatea first encountered the play in Peru and was immediately drawn to its emotional territory. She later brought the project to Art Plus, where Jenny connected strongly with the material and its exploration of complicated and sometimes toxic experiences surrounding motherhood. That connection helped create the path for the production's New York presentation.

There was also a practical challenge in bringing a Peruvian work to an English-speaking stage. The original play existed in Spanish, and Vinatea became responsible for adapting it into English. Rather than simply translating the dialogue word for word, she worked to preserve the identity of the character and the cultural context of the story.

“The character is Latina, and I wanted her to stay in that space,” Vinatea says.

That decision is central to the production. Serpent Woman is predominantly performed in English, but Spanish remains an important part of the monologue. The bilingual structure allows the character to move naturally between languages while reflecting the experience of a Latina woman whose identity does not fit neatly into one linguistic or cultural category.

The creative team also brings an international perspective to the production. Argentine director Aksel Tang guides the performance, while Alessandra Rivera serves as choreographer. The project has also been connected to The Drama League on Canal Street, adding another layer to Vinatea's introduction to New York's theater community.

For Vinatea, however, bringing Serpent Woman to New York is about more than presenting a Peruvian play in another country. It is an opportunity to bring a piece of the Amazon with her. The sounds, the language, the serpent and the physicality of the performance all carry traces of where she comes from.

Her journey from performing at home in Iquitos to standing alone on a New York stage gives the project an additional resonance. She left a place where theater was not readily available to pursue an artistic career in Lima and eventually New York. Now, through a 40-minute performance, she is returning to those roots while speaking to audiences far beyond Peru.

In Serpent Woman, the serpent begins as something that emerges from the body and seems impossible to understand. But as the story unfolds, it becomes a pathway toward memory, identity and transformation. For Vinatea, that transformation is also personal: an opportunity to bring her Amazonian heritage, her language and her experience as a Peruvian artist into the center of her work in New York.