"Baltimore: In Recovery" is a theatrical work that personifies Baltimore as a patient mandated into therapy, blending civic satire, emotional realism, and surreal interruption. It uses the structure of therapy sessions to interrogate Baltimore’s public narrative and turns it into embodied dialogue. I wrote and directed it. The long form of the show was staged by the Baltimore Rock Opera Society in partnership with New Song Learning Center in 2022, and a special "mental health and wellness" edition was presented/sponsored by Balance Point Wellness, a Baltimore-based non-profit offering mental health support to teens and young adults in 2023. This show has been performed at the 2024 Charm City Fringe Festival.  The piece is one stop shopping for art and healing.

I came up with the idea while passing a methadone clinic while on the way to a therapy session. I muttered to myself, "this whole city really needs therary. Wonder what that would be like?" When I returned from therapy, I began outlining the plot and identifying the archetypes that would become the "patients" seen by the "therapist." I took my lived experiences and those of other Baltimoreans to flesh out characters that represent Baltimore's past, present and future, along with its beauty and its challenges. I ws really nervous about doing it, because play writing was something I had always avoided all my  life. It always frightened and intimidated me in a way I could never work my way past. But one good thing about conceptualizing this while I was working at BROS (I was their Director of Community Engagement at the time) was that I was surrounded by a lot of creative people who were fearlessly creating theatrical work. They really dreamed big, and that helped break me out of my shell creatively. I was especially proud of this work because there were a lot of social workers, psychologists and psychiartists in the audience at all the shows, especially the shows we did with Balance Point Wellness, and many of them came to me to commend me on how accurately I depicted therapy, even while taking some dramatic and artistic license. That meant a lot to me, because I knew the work was resonating on several levels at once. The long form version of the show, in addition to the theatrical components, included musical/spoken word performances between each "therapy session" by The Out of Water eXperience, and included projects accompanying each therapy session. The version for Charm City Fringe did not include musical/spoken word performances, but added a character/additional therapy session. Producing different iterations of the show allowed me to put on different hats - writing and directing and even doing some stage managing and handling of logistics. But audiences have always responded to seeing their thoughts and fears onstage. In many ways I consider it my love letter to my city, and it has helped me explore the meaning and value of community.

I always knew I'd write a memoir at some point. My biggest concern was that I wrote it well. I spent a little over 10 plus years trying to write my memoir. But each time I stopped myself. I realized I was bleeding all over the pages, which was affecting how I was telling my story. I was still processing my story, and that kind of writing was not what I wanted captured in my memoir. So I stopped, went back to therapy, worked on myself, and came back to it when I was in a better headspace. I actually did that twice - started writing, realized I wasn't ready, stepped away from it, stepped back, wrote, realized I wasn't ready. When I finally wrote the memoir, I  knew it was time. I could tell because I was able to center myself in the story. A lot of my memoir has to do with my relationship with my dad, and previous versions were very much about my dad. He was the main character in my story because I was still working through everything. In fact the very first version of my memoir had a picture of him on the cover instead of me. And the memoir is about me, so I should be centering myself in telling my story. I was able to figure that out in time. I got okay with my lens being the lens of record for this piece of work. Once I got to that place, the manuscript poured out of me. And it won an award - competing against hundreds of other memoirs/works of non-fiction. I was very proud of that. While the work is very much about colorism and race, it is also about identity - about figuring out who you are and how others influence that, often long before you get to figure things out for yourself. Writing this book has given me the opportunity to talk about a lot of intersecting issues in community discussions. I've visited most of the branches of the library around Baltimore, leading community discussions about race, colorism, identity, and family. It was a bit disconcerting to see how many people struggled in various ways with these issues, and as I curated more community discussions I began making a point to bring therapists to sit on panels to help people unpack these issues.

"Writing  plays frightened me for years. I avoided them like the plague. I found the style of writing intimidating. Like many writers I have encountered, I felt the stage was a limitation for the ways in which I could be creative. But after writing "Baltimore: In Recovery", I felt more confident about doing it. I started seeing the stage as a container to hold whatever I put in it, and less like a barrier to creativity. The true story that eventually became "Shades Of Honor" is one related to my father and his experiences with colorism while serving in the Army Air Force during World War II. My dad hoarded a lot of his paperwork throughout his life, so I actually have a lot of his military stuff from when he served. There are a few lines in the play where the commanding officer reads one of the commendation memos in the private's file, and the words are from one of the commendations my dad actually received. Writing a 10 minute play is a particular kind of container, and this was my first time attempting it. It was wonderful to have it be so well-received, and seeing it acted out onstage was amazing, though I've seen my work onstage in the past. This was different for me - it had a different kind of meaning because it was a true story."

2024 marked the 20th year anniversary of The Variations Project, Baltimore’s original, ten-minute new play festival presented by Rapid Lemon Productions. The theme for each year's festival is chosen by audience vote the previous year, and the 20th anniversay brought audiences. “Variations on Courage.” The festival was comprised of 13 plays about courage of all kinds.  Petula's play, entitled "Shades of Honor" depicted a light-skinned Black man serving during World War II who is offered the opportunity to return to civilian life as a White man by his commanding officer. 

Inspired by Paula Vogel's Bake-Offs, the Brown Sugar Bake-Off was presented by  The Two Strikes Collective, in partnership with The Strand Theater. It is a celebration of the unique and universal stories Black women and non-binary creatives have to tell.  2025 was its third year, and it focused on mental Health and what it means for Black and Brown women to reclaim their wellness in the face of emotional labor and generational trauma. Eight plays were selected to be performed, including mine, entitled In A Black Woman’s Kitchen.

In A Black Woman’s Kitchen is a two-hander stage play that unfolds in the intimate, familiar space of a kitchen as best friends Jasmine and Karla navigate conversations about marriage, mental health, cultural identity, beauty, and self-trust. What begins as a routine hair appointment becomes a deeply personal exploration of vulnerability, particularly around Jasmine’s struggle to reclaim a sense of self after betrayal in her interracial marriage. Through discussions of therapy, Black womanhood, and the symbolism of hair as both personal choice and cultural marker, the play examines how intimacy, control, and freedom intersect in everyday life. Baking serves as both a literal and metaphorical grounding force — a space where Jasmine once felt confident, creative, and whole. As the women reflect on the pressures placed on Black women’s bodies, appearances, and emotional labor, the kitchen becomes a site of healing and reclamation. The play culminates in a powerful act of self-assertion, using humor, warmth, and shared history to highlight the courage it takes to choose oneself again. Blending realism with cultural specificity, In A Black Woman’s Kitchen centers Black women’s interior lives with honesty, tenderness, and joy.  The work itself is what I would call a fictionalized account of various conversations I've had with Black women friends of mine, including my daughter, who happens to also be named Jasmine.