For years, actress Glennis Singleton Crosby had written plays intended for churches. When she wrote “Hypocrite: The Musical,” she tried submitting it to local churches, but when no one wanted it, she decided to start a production company.

Her inspiration came from not wanting to see people suffer. Six years ago, while visiting Washington, D.C., she saw a church that had been closed during a snowstorm while the homeless community outside was freezing. Her first thought was how simply opening a building with heat and running water could help end homelessness.

“As churches started to fail across the nation for lack of membership and money, I thought, ‘What if the people we keep on the outside could actually be people with money who could help us?’” she recalls. “I went to sleep, and God and I wrote ‘Hypocrite’ together at 3 a.m. in the morning.”

It was during COVID that she decided to finally produce the play. Despite being tired of isolation and sad during lockdown, she found that the play could bring her joy and laughter. “As a creative, once you create there’s a need to develop your idea and let others experience it,” she says. “My ultimate goal was for the audience to be uplifted and to check their pulse on where we stand as church members, and as community, on how we treat those less fortunate than us.”

Churches may not have understood Crosby’s intentions, but the theater world did.

“I’m a theatre geek and I think churches assumed that this was a bashing of the church, but it’s not,” she explains. “It’s really giving insight on how we can come together to save each other. Did I mention it’s a comedy as well?”

After a sold-out one-night performance last year at Dominion Energy Center and two sold out shows at the Henrico Theatre, the gospel comedy “Hypocrite: The Musical” returns to the stage on July 20 and 21 for three performances at the Perkinson Center for the Arts and Education in Chester. “We’ve had requests to bring it to Virginia Beach and Connecticut,” she says. “My personal goal is to make it to Broadway, from my mouth to God’s ear. I want him to know that he can trust me with spreading the good news.”

A former Richmond police officer in the 1980s, Crosby had a lot of experience working with disenfranchised people, ultimately discovering that the homeless are simply regular people who fell on hard situations. “Everyone who’s homeless is not necessarily broke, some of it is mental illness,” she says. “Everyone has a story that leads them to an outcome, and you never know until you look someone in the eyes and have the conversation about what brought them here. No, I’ve never been homeless, but some months in my life I’ve come mighty close, and it’s a horrible feeling.”

Season 20 “American Idol” contestant Tyler Allen will make his acting debut in “Hypocrite: The Musical.” The performances at the Perkinson Center will be professionally filmed as a means of promoting the play’s potential to tour managers, producers, and sponsors who might take the show on the road. “This will not be the last play that you see of ours,” Crosby says. “We have five plays in the vault waiting for the perfect time to be produced.”

In the meantime, Crosby sees the present as the ideal time for a play like “Hypocrite: The Musical” and not just because she wrote it.

“The world seems so mean and unsettled and we seem to be fighting an invincible foe, which is an unknown hatred for people who are not like us,” she says. “It’s one small step from a hometown girl just doing her little part to make this world feel a little bit better.”

“Hypocrite: The Musical” will be performed July 20-21 at the Perkinson Center for the Arts and Education, 11810 Centre Street, Chester. Tickets at www.hypocritethemusical.com and The Perkinson Center box office www.perkinsoncenter.org