True crime has been called “podcasting crack.”

There are more than 2 million podcasts out there. And according to National Public Radio, half of the 10 most downloaded podcasts in America are focused on true crime. The most popular, “My Favorite Murder,” averages 35 million downloads per month. The highest-rated prime-time TV series right now is “NCIS” at 8.5 million weekly viewers.

“When future historians look back at this golden age of podcasting, they’ll likely point out that true crime was the engine that boosted the medium into the stratosphere,” Rebecca Lavoie recently wrote for Vulture. A few true-crime podcasts are responsible for some of the best journalism in America today. (See the groundbreaking “In the Dark” by American Public Media.)

It has been estimated that the overall number of podcasting listeners grew by 20 million during the pandemic, to a total of 160 million for 2020. And the Denver Center for the Performing Arts is seizing on this growing cultural phenomenon with the June 8 launch of an original (and free) interactive podcasting adventure called “The Bright Lights of Denver.”

This creative project will be, ironically enough, a fictional true-crime podcast dropping on four successive Tuesdays. It is scripted by creators Kenny Moten and Jessica Hindsley, who are both accomplished actors and directors in the local theatre community. Their main character is a hometown journalist named Ryan Streeter, who is making a podcast about the recent growth of Denver as a millennial hub. But when one of his interview sources disappears, his podcast unexpectedly pivots into a real-time missing-persons investigation.

“Part of what’s fun about this project is that there are a variety of ways you can go deep with the story,” said Charlie Miller, curator of the Denver Center’s most adventurous programming wing, called Off-Center.

“On one level, you can just listen to the podcast and have a complete experience,” he added. But there is also a digital component that will take full advantage of social media. “The Bright Lights of Denver” already has its own Facebook group, where Miller hopes a community of fans will soon coalesce and share notes and theories. All three main fictional characters have their own Instagram pages where, Miller said, there will be more layers to the story to uncover. Two public Q&As will be scheduled on Zoom.

And for the most devoted (let’s call them … what? The Right Lights? The Zeit Lights?), there will be a third level: The real world.

“About three key Denver locations will be mentioned in each episode,” Miller said, offering My Brother’s Bar as one example. Listeners who then venture out to those locations will find Easter eggs in the form of additional clues and background information that can be unlocked by a QR code strategically positioned at each location. “That adds an additional layer to the story for

those who want to discover more information that will inform their own theories about what might have happened.”

Moten and Hindsley believe this whole meta experience will be a magnet for anyone obsessed with true-crime podcasts. They know this demographic well, for they are among them.

“I listen to a lot of true-crime podcasts, and one of the things I find interesting about the genre is the online community these fans have created,” said Moten. I hope our audience will interact in the same way and immerse themselves in the full experience.”

That experience is envisioned as an act of discovery and community-building — two things that have been in short supply during this long and isolated year, particularly at the Denver Center. The largest regional arts center between Chicago and Los Angeles has estimated a loss of $80 million in unrealized ticket revenue since the COVID shutdown. Broadway touring productions won’t resume until Disney’s “The Lion King” comes back to the Buell Theatre in December, and no official resumption of the homegrown DCPA Theatre Company’s programming has yet been announced.

That has left Miller’s most nimble Off-Center programming wing to keep the faint pulse of the Denver Center beating over the past year, primarily through creative partnerships such as “Camp Christmas” (with Lonnie Hanzon), “The Whiskey Tasting” (with The Catamounts), the popular “Mixed Taste” summer lecture series (with Museum of Contemporary Art Denver), and Oscar-winning director Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s “CARNE y ARENA” (with Stanley Marketplace).

“This year has been incredibly challenging for everyone in the arts, whether you are an actor or an artist or an administrator or a producer,” Miller said. “For the Denver Center, because of the sheer scale of our operation and the huge losses in revenue that happened when we had to cancel shows, it was enormously challenging for the organization just to get to a stable place where we could make sure that the organization could survive. But, more optimistically, this time has been an opportunity for us to really think about who we are, and who we want to be, and what we do, and how we show up in the world, and how we support our community.”

“The Bright Lights of Denver” grew out of Miller’s community-minded “Powered By Off-Center” initiative, which since 2018 has invited Colorado artists to propose new theatrical experiences with logistical and financial backing from the Denver Center. This year, 39 projects representing 82 Colorado artists were submitted. Two were chosen, including “Don Quixote de Auraria,” which will be developed later this year as a modern-day retelling of “Don Quixote” within the context of the real history and ongoing housing and urban-development issues that shape downtown Denver and Auraria. Each winning project has a $10,000 production budget.

“I really wanted to use what limited resources we had this year to invest in the local arts community, and to lift up as many local artists as possible,” said Miller. “I was looking for new ideas and new ways of telling stories that put the audience at the center of the story.”

And if it all works out, “The Bright Lights of Denver” could mark the beginning of brighter days at the Denver Center.

Denver Gazette contributing arts columnist John Moore is an award-winning journalist who was named one of the 10 most influential theatre critics by American Theatre Magazine. He is now producing independent journalism as part of his own company, Moore Media.