SENIOR PROFILE: Zohar Tirosh

CORRECTION: This article originally stated that Zohar Tirosh's play is The Bloodiness. The play is actually called This Bloody Mess. Additionally, this article originally stated that the play was going into production. In fact, the play is going into development.

When Zohar Tirosh graduated from the School of General Studies, she unleashed a bit of herself and Columbia into the public world. Her play, This Bloody Mess, began its development at Lincoln Center Theater on Tuesday, and her one-woman show Pieces is slated to be produced in Boston in 2008.

After acting in a Hanukkah play, among others, at her school in Israel, Tirosh said she knew that "theater chose me." She pursued training as an actress for many years, culminating in her enrollment in New York's Circle in the Square Theatre School.

Tirosh tried her hand at writing, and after penning Pieces, she realized that she wanted to train as a playwright. She then enrolled in GS to study creative writing. "Now I feel I have a new wealth of knowledge to draw on," she said.

Tirosh's wealth of knowledge is bound to be vast, with academic advisers ranging in the theater and writing programs to the department of Middle Eastern and Asian languages and cultures. "It's my life-theater, writing, and the Middle East," she said.

Director Suzana Berger, who had worked with Tirosh, applied to Lincoln Center's director's lab program with This Bloody Mess. "It all came about miraculously," Tirosh said. Once in the program, the play was one of five works selected to be developed out of all those submitted by participants.

More than anything else, Tirosh said she learned to "not give up, continue working and writing and trusting that there's a moment when things do come together" during her years in Morningside Heights.

Her stint at GS came with moments of doubt and struggle. "I wanted to be in the theater, and there I was in GS at the old age of 26, so there were times when I thought, 'Is this the right thing? I want to be in the theater-is this taking me where I want to go?'"

After few seconds of reflection, Tirosh answered her own question, saying, "It ended up being the right thing-and miraculously wonderful in the end."