It’s a busy Philly season for filmmaker-playwright Joshua Crone

Growing up in an evangelical Christian home in upstate New York and then central Florida, playwright and filmmaker Joshua Crone was the kid who would invite a friend — like his elementary-school classmate — to church and Sunday school.

“I got him to turn his life around — that was like in fourth grade,” Crone laughed.

But do proselytizers bear responsibility for the lives of those they’ve converted? Crone raises that question in Washed in the Blood, presented through Aug. 27 by Crone’s theater and indie cinema company, Yellow Bicycle Co.

Crone wrote Washed in the Blood late in 2015, drawing on news accounts of a horrifying mass shooting a few months earlier at Umpqua Community College in Oregon. According to survivors’ accounts, shooter Chris Harper-Mercer, a 26-year-old student who ended up killing himself, asked some of his nine victims whether they were Christians. Those who said yes were shot.

“I put myself as a kid in that situation,” Crone said.

What would have happened, he wondered, if he had been in that classroom? Would he have denied his faith to save his life? What if he had denied his faith, but then witnessed the friend he converted being killed for refusing to turn away from Christianity? Would Crone bear responsibility for his friend’s death? What about the youth pastor who encouraged youngsters like Crone to bring their friends to Jesus?

Tough questions, but Crone is not passing judgment on proselytizers. They’re the “people who I grew up with, so I don’t think of them as evil,” he said.

“At the end of the day, it’s not really a religious play,” he said. “It leaves you with an agnostic ending. There’s no clear message. It just asks questions, which for me, is the whole point of writing plays.”

Crone arrived in Philadelphia in the spring of 2021, having bounced around New York and Los Angeles. By happenstance, he met Fergie’s Pub co-owner Fergus “Fergie” Carey at a bicycle shop.

Carey invited Crone to live at a house he owned in South Philadelphia. Crone converted the first floor into a theater, using it for small plays and as a place to film movie scenes.

Eventually, Crone rented the second floor above a deli at 15th and Arch Streets. Converting the space, which had been an escape room, into a 44-seat non-accessible theater. The space opened earlier this month for Washed in the Blood.

Meanwhile, Crone is readying Ashes Ashes, a play reflecting on the August 1945 nuclear bombing of Hiroshima, for performances Sept. 7-21 as part of the Philadelphia Fringe Festival.

Set in the 1950s and 1980s, Ashes Ashes, a world premiere, involves imagined encounters among a bombing survivor who became a sex worker; the pilot and co-pilot of the plane that dropped the bomb; and a Japanese American journalist.

Also at the Fringe Festival, Crone will screen several of his own films — Black Box, a reflection on the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks; Salt of the Earth, a documentary inspired by the January 2022 truckers’ protest in Canada; and Manifesto, about a former Marine’s efforts to write his manifesto following a revenge attack on a Los Angeles mosque.

Also on tap for Fringe is the Bicycle Shorts Film Festival — a two-part project. Crone is inviting moviemakers to submit short (13 minutes or less) films with a bicycle theme to be screened at the Yellow Bicycle venue Sept. 22- 24.

In addition, he is mounting a 24-hour film competition with all sorts of fun wrinkles. For example, contestants must include an actual bicycle in every shot and film the entire three-to-seven-minute movie outdoors over a 24-hour period. There will be a mandatory orientation meeting for those participating.

“Washed in the Blood,” Yellow Bicycle Co., Philadelphia Theatre Co., runs through Aug. 27 at the Yellow Bicycle Theater, 1435 Arch St., 2d floor, Phila. Check Yellowbicycle.com for dates, times for “Ashes Ashes,” “Black Box,” “Salt of the Earth,” and “Manifesto,” as well as for submission and screening times for the Bicycle Shorts Film Festival. For information on other local events, visit inquirer.com/things-to-do-philly