Suicide Hotline Inspires Play

ARTS&LIFE THEATER

Robert Axelrod

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Suicide Hotline Inspires Play

Ann Arbor native wins national writing competition.

DANNY SCHWARTZ STAFF WRITER

Jewish screenwriter Robert Axelrod, who was born and raised in the Ann Arbor area, has been selected from nearly 1,000 entries as the grand prize winner for the 2020 ScreenCraft Stage Play Writing “MY HOPE Competition. Written as a play, Axelrod’s

IS TO TELL A winning script “Lifeline” follows a mother beginning to

STORY AND work through her grief by vol-

HOPEFULLY unteering at a suicide hotline after the death of her gay teenOPEN PEOPLE’S age son. The inspiration for the EYES.” screenplay came from Axelrod volunteering for a few years at — PLAYWRIGHT the Trevor Project, a suicide ROBERT AXELROD and crisis prevention hotline focusing on LGBTQ+ youth. Axelrod was inspired by his experiences there and wanted to write a story about hope and how people could come from different walks of life and ultimately want to help one another.

“I kind of wrote it in the heat of the summer with the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, with the pandemic, with the election gearing up, and it just felt like a very divided time.” Axelrod said. “It was a script I had started working on before but with everything going on, I was compelled to go back to this piece that was really about unity and hope, at a time where things felt so divided and uncertain.”

Axelrod attended the Hebrew Day School in Ann Arbor and Huron High School, then attended Syracuse University’s School of Visual and Performing Arts for college and has spent the past six-anda-half years in Los Angeles pursuing screenwriting. Axelrod is also currently a legal assistant for an entertainment law firm.

PRODUCERS INTERESTED

Prizes for the winner of the competition, which seeks to celebrate excellent plays that have great film or TV adaptation potential, include further opportunities in getting their screenplay seen by those in Hollywood.

Axelrod, though, has already received attention for the screenplay.

“There are two producers who I had sent this to and, long story short, they’re interested in adapting it starting in the new year,” Axelrod said. “We’re still working on what that all looks like.”

No matter what happens, Axelrod hopes the piece will be able to reach more people.

Axelrod says the win was a huge shock, and just being included was a valuable enough opportunity.

“It was so meaningful,” Axelrod said. “I really applied because some of the judges were Pulitzer-prize winning playwrights who are some of my absolute favorites of all time and artistic directors of theater companies whose work I’ve admired for years and years, so even just knowing that my work was read by those people was a win in and of itself.”

Axelrod believes his local Jewish beginnings helped lead him to this success.

From an early age, Axelrod said, creativity and creative writing were very much a part of the core curriculum. He was interested in stories from a very young age and helped start the school newspaper at the Hebrew Day School.

“I think that was very much a part of the education I was given in day school, whether that was learning stories from the Torah or creative writing exercises. There was just a lot of creativity imbued in the curriculum,” Axelrod said.

Those beginnings have led Axelrod to make sure Judaism often plays a role in the things he writes, and that especially may be more important now than ever.

“With antisemitism and hate crimes on the rise, I feel very compelled and (have) a responsibility to tell stories that deal with Jewish characters and communities,” Axelrod said. “Not in a preachy way, but just to humanize people from different backgrounds. That’s my hope for things I write, to tell a story but hopefully open people’s eyes.”