Everyone has a secret.

Frank Warren knows this firsthand. Since 2004, he has received more than 100 secrets a week sent on postcards by anonymous senders.

Some are funny — such as a child being told avocados are alligator eggs. Others are serious, such as a person admitting to not loving their child.

Warren has shared the secrets online, in six books and in exhibits at the American Visionary Art Museum, the Smithsonian Institution and at various venues throughout the country.

For the last few years, Warren has also shared them in the show “PostSecret: The Show.”

On Tuesday, the show comes to Columbia as a special event sponsored by the Columbia Festival of the Arts. It is the only Maryland stop on the play's 25-city tour.

“The timing was right,” said Diana Forbus, development and support services coordinator for the Columbia festival. “We have been doing special events between festivals and the tour was coming through. We were able to get it.”

Featuring three actors and a musician, “PostSecret: The Show” shares a variety of secrets using videos and images and through audience participation.

“In ‘PostSecret: The Show,' we try to bring to life the inspirations ... behind the secrets,” Warren said. “Sharing a secret can transform a life. The courage to be vulnerable can change everything.”

The show will also be sort of a homecoming for Warren, who owned a small business in Montgomery County when he started the project. He now lives in California. He started collecting secrets in 2004, when he printed 3,000 self-addressed postcards and handed them out to strangers at Metro stops in Washington.

“I asked them to write a secret they never told anyone before,” Warren said. “Slowly, day by day, I started getting mail.”

Each week, Warren scanned the postcards for his online blog. He soon discovered that his blog had gone viral, as postcards started arriving from such places as Dublin, New Zealand, Iraq and Texas.

“It was just a quirky little project,” Warren said. “It caught fire.”

Sifting through all the secrets to create the play was a challenge, he admitted, and material had to be left out.

“Writing a play is ... a lot of work,” Warren said of the years when the play was more a workshop. “We needed to have an audience to see where we were hitting or missing. There was a second, third and fourth draft.

“This is the final version and we couldn't be more excited.”

Audience members can share their own secrets during the show as well as comment on those secrets shared. These activities keep the show “alive,” Warren said, and brings the audience closer.

“It is different every night. It is evolving still,” Warren said of the show.

“It's really exciting,” Forbus said of presenting the show. “It is something really unique for this community.”

Within in the first three days of ticket sales, more than 100 were sold, Forbus said. A handful of tickets remain for the night of the event, she said.

“For this show, it is really different than our typical audience — younger,” Forbus said. “It will be interesting to see how it goes.

“I hope to be there and do a Q&A at the end and stay around for a book-signing,” Warren said.

“It is definitely a different experience,” Warren said of the show. “If anything, it will make for interesting comments for the drive home.”

“PostSecret: The Show” will be performed at 9 p.m. Tuesday at the Horowitz Center Smith Theatre, 10901 Little Patuxent Parkway, Columbia. 410-715-3044. For more information on the “PostSecret” project, and other show dates elsewhere, go to postsecretshow .com.