A complex heroine, written for his wife

Novelist Franklin Woolsey is on the verge of completing his magnum opus, his secretary assures the audience in Michael Hollinger's Ghost-Writer, now in its world-premiere run at the Arden Theatre.

It's true, Myra Babbage admits, that work stopped for a while when the famed New York author died in midsentence. But Myra, who kept vigil at her typewriter for weeks waiting for Woolsey's words to reach her, now gleefully reports that the novelist has resumed dictating the remaining chapters to her.

Myra claims that Woolsey dictated his novels to her for so long that she became indispensable to his creative process - so indispensable that his words can't exist without her mediation.

That is the delicious premise of Ghost-Writer, Hollinger's playful yet moving follow-up to his 2006 hit Opus, about a conflict-ridden string quartet, which won multiple Barrymore Awards here and moved successfully to New York. The new work, in which his wife, Megan Bellwoar, plays Myra, is the seventh by Hollinger to premiere at the Arden.

Set in 1919, the three-character drama is dominated by Myra, an intelligent, fastidious, deeply repressed typist who details her relationship with Woolsey to an unseen interviewer - she speaks directly to the audience - in a bid to justify her claim that the posthumously composed novel comes from her former employer.

Ghost-Writer continues to ask the question first posed by Opus - where does creativity come from?

Born in Lancaster, Hollinger began his career as a violist, earning a degree in performance from Oberlin Conservatory before moving to Philadelphia in 1984.

Yet, he says, "I was always ambivalent about [music] as a career," and the stage seemed a natural choice - both his parents were involved in community theater. So he changed course and earned a master's degree in theater at Villanova University, where he now is an assistant professor of theater.

Ghost-Writer's director, Jim Christy, was one of Hollinger's teachers at Villanova. "I remember thinking, 'Oh, this guy has a way with words,' " he says. "He can be light and sometimes very serious, but always with an ironic, playful point of view."

Arden artistic director Terrence J. Nolen, who directed Hollinger's six previous Arden plays, beginning with 1994's An Empty Plate in the Cafe du Grand Boeuf, says he is impressed by Hollinger's range.