Artist Spotlight: Josh Crone

Philly Fringe is probably something in the know to everyone in the Philly theatre scene.  For a glorious couple of weeks, venues known, unknown, and completely wacky, show plays that you probably wouldn’t see anywhere else.  Fringe is all about doing something different…doing something daring.  There are all sorts of shows that you would see at Fringe.  The Yellow Bicycle Company in center city Philadelphia is one of those venues showing some truly remarkable looking plays.

Josh Crone is the one running this operation.  The Yellow Bicycle is a theatre, but they also host films and other arts.  Some of what we’ll be experiencing this Fringe is a little bit of all of it.  One thing is for sure, Josh loves what he has and what he does.  I love that there are theatres like this all over Philly, and I am truly excited to have stumbled onto this one.

I got to ask Josh some pre-Fringe questions.  It was truly wonderful getting to hear his passion for everything that comes through those doors, and what life is like pre-Fringe, during Fringe, and that time when everyone is breathing a sigh of relief (kidding!) as it all wraps up.  Fringe is a special time for Philly theatre, and no one knows that more than the artists who do this year after year.  You’re not going to do it if you don’t totally love it.

What does running Yellow Bicycle Company mean to you? 

 If you had asked when I opened the answer would have been very different, but today running Yellow Bicycle Company to me means running a business. I had no idea what that meant when I signed a lease on an abandoned escape room four years ago. And I'm still learning. Business training for veterans helped (warriorrising.org and vettoceo.org). Friends, family and long-time collaborators helped; audiences showing up to support; artists renting the space and writing reviews; actors like Thoeger Hansen, Jonathan Powers and Richard Roddy, who travel from NY and LA to work here; publicists like Jay Michaels who help spread the word. You can do a lot by yourself, but not everything. The hardest part is the marketing. The best show in the world isn't worth much if no one sees it. And believe me, I've done shows that next to no one saw. They won't come if you build it, they'll come if you market what you built. I'm still learning that. 

You write plays as well!  What inspires you from start to finish?

I built the theater because I write, like a painter builds a studio to paint.  The stage is the canvas. Until I'm working on a play with actors, the script is just charcoal studies in a notebook. What inspires me is what makes me ask questions, makes me laugh or cry or punch a heavy bag. Usually something happening in the world or some unresolved thing in my past reflected in current events.

When you make a lot of art there's a lot of synchronicity in your life. It's a wave you can ride if you see it coming and swim with it. September 11th was the big wave for me, though it took a decade to catch it. The last thing I'll ever write about that is having its New York premiere at Film Noir Cinema in Brooklyn on 9/11, the 25th anniversary. I wrote it as a play but made it into a movie due to COVID. Waiting for Westy grew out of A Marine Walks Up to the Pearly Gates, which was my attempt to wrap my jarhead around what it means to be a Marine. Westy is more about what it means to be a man with a gun in a war you don't understand. 

How do you welcome in artists, both new to you and not new to you?  How do you give them a home?

I cast local talent, usually through backstage or TheatrePhiladelphia.org. And everyone's welcome to rent the space. But I'm no longer in the business of giving people a home; that's a one-way ticket to losing my own. I help when I can, and sometimes when I can't.

When UArts closed, for example, I gave former students free space for a month while I biked around town painting houses to keep the lights on. Our rental rates year one were crazy low. I've organized festivals where we coproduce and offer a split. And Thoeger, Seth Hammerman, Jaclyn Osterstock and I did set up a nonprofit a few years ago. We raised enough in grants and donations to present a free production of Marine in D.C. for the 250th Marine Corps Birthday and offer classes for next to nothing. But I'm moving away from that hybrid model, because frankly it leaves me exhausted, disillusioned and back at square one.

My focus now is on building a viable business through event rentals and post-production services and using the surplus to fund loss-making activities like plays and classes. 

Philly Fringe is always so exciting!  How did you decide on what you were going to be showing for the festival? 

Fringe is amazing. I can't say enough about how well organized it is and how good it is for the theater community. The requests start pouring in around February, and by June we're usually fully booked with a roster of great shows. This year is no exception, with ten wildly diverse guest productions, ranging from a hip-hop retelling of A Christmas Carol and deep-sea black-light puppetry to a lifelong Elvis impersonator’s solo show and a gothic supernatural thriller. 

As for our in-house productions: Waiting for Westy premiered to great reviews last May, so we're bringing it back for three fringe performances. Bicycle Shorts Film Festival, now in its fourth year, is a highlight of our fringe calendar. This year's lineup includes powerful documentaries on urban advocacy, resilience and inclusion, immersive mountain journeys through Denmark and Idaho, poetic BMX meditations, and whimsical shorts ranging from an Amazonian bike on a journey of self-discovery to a functional frame carved out of ice. 

And despite what I said about no longer coproducing, the Company is coproducing Lakota Day with Delwin Elk Bear Fiddler Jr. I met Delwin at a screening of an incredible documentary about his family called Without Arrows two years ago. So we're screening that and he's presenting two dance and storytelling pieces the last day of the festival.

And on September 13 we're hosting a development reading of my AI-themed sci-fi screenplay Prometheus: Bound. Despite the genre framing and trendy topic, it's actually a very personal project. My dad designed neural networks for SDI (aka Star Wars), and as a kid I would sit in on classes he taught at Penn State about pattern recognition. The first short story I ever wrote was about a boy and his TRS-80 saving the world from nuclear war. AI has always been a part of my life, and suddenly it's a part of everyone's. So I guess it's time to ride that wave. 

What does Philly Fringe mean to you?

To me Philly Fringe means remembering why you do it. 

What’s up next? 

Next I'm going to make Prometheus: Bound. Depending on how the Wefunder campaign goes, I'll either make it myself as a solo AI-animated feature while running the theater, or shut down the Bike for a few months, remove the risers, paint the walls and floor green, shoot it with live actors, and composite the footage with AI-generated backgrounds based on 3D models. Either way it's going to be another long, strange trip on the Yellow Bicycle.

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Josh is one of those people working hard for Philly artists.  He’s contributing to the scene in so many ways, and I love how much he’s working on, both for Fringe and in the future.  I’m really excited to be a part of The Yellow Bicycle this year for Fringe.  I already know this is going to be an experience unlike any other…Josh’s words have fostered so much excitement!  I’m so looking forward to Fringe this year!