"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. This show has been performed at the 2024 Charm City Fringe Festival, 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. 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."

"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. I started writing it at least three times. 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 - that writing belongs in a journal. So I stopped, went back to therapy, worked on myself, and came back to it when I was in a better headspace. When I finally wrote the memoir, I was able to center myself in the story - previous versions were very much about my dad. He was the main character in my story because I was still working through everything. The very first version of my memoir had a picture of him on the cover instead of me. But once I got good at centering myself and being okay with my lens being the lens of record for this piece of work, the manuscript poured out of me."

She's Such A Bright Girl: An American Story" is the award-winning story (the book won an Honorable Mention in the 2019 North Street Books Prize writing competition) of Petula Caesar, a girl raised in the 1970s and 1980s in Paterson, New Jersey and Baltimore, Maryland. It chronicles her struggles being raised by a father who went to great lengths to raise her to be as "White" as possible. This meant straightening her hair at an early age. It meant surrounding her with white dolls, white artists and white writers in their home. It meant discouraging her from attending an HBCU. Ultimately, it meant always being aware of how white people viewed Black people, and always behaving in ways that would make white people comfortable. In exchange, Petula would achieve upward mobility and escape the trauma that her father felt was inescapable as a Black woman in America. Petula's parents came to New Jersey after the coal mining town they both grew up in started to go into decline. While lots of Black people migrated north to find manufacturing jobs throughout the early-to-mid 20th century, Petula's father had plans that went beyond financial security for his family. Once Petula, a very fair-skinned girl, was born, her father realized her light-skin could give her a great advantage in a world that didn't value Black people in general - a world that placed a special burden of oppression on those who were darker-skinned. He realized because his daughter was so light skinned, he could raise his daughter to not only know how to navigate the white world successfully, he could raise her to see herself as a white person. To him, this would give her a better chance at success and prosperity in life. But while doing this, he created a tremendous identity crisis in Petula, who had to fight the massive fear, lack of confidence, and raging insecurities that sprung up in her from a very early because of her upbringing – an upbringing already challenging because of her family’s race, class and status in society.

"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. 

A concert is taking place on Funktopia, a small planet hidden behind The North Star where some Africans escaping slavery in America ended up. Petula was the producer and co-creative director on the project during her time at the Baltimore Rock Opera Society as Director of Community Engagement. The concert featured a collective of Baltimore talents who came together for four shows at The Voxel Theatre in September 2021.

"My time at BROS was not always easy, but it did stretch me as an arts administrator, as a collaborator, as a team leader, and creatively. The entire story of how Funktopia came to be is a long complicated one full of twists and turns - even a cease and desist order - and I would have never thought such a stunningly beautiful thing could have come out of such confusion. Everything from how it looks to how it sounds to how it feels is truly a wonder. It is a testament to what can happen when people are given resources, access, and freedom to create. It was my honor to lead this project."

Two Strikes Theater Collective put together "The Brown Sugar Bake Off" 10 minute play festival in 2025 with a focus on mental health, and "In A Black Woman's Kitchen" was one of the plays selected.