34 | DECEMBER 31 • 2020 

J

ewish 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 
Competition.
Written as a play, Axelrod’s 
winning script “Lifeline” fol-
lows a mother beginning to 
work through her grief by vol-
unteering at a suicide hotline 
after the death of her gay teen-
age son.
The inspiration for the 
screenplay came from Axelrod 
volunteering for a few years at 
the Trevor Project, a suicide 
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 move-
ment, 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-and-
a-half years in Los Angeles pur-
suing 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 adapta-
tion 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 curric-
ulum,
” 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 dif-
ferent backgrounds. That’s my 
hope for things I write, to tell a 
story but hopefully open peo-
ple’s eyes.
” 

Ann Arbor native wins national 
writing competition.

DANNY SCHWARTZ STAFF WRITER

Suicide Hotline 
Inspires Play

CONTRIBUTED

ARTS&LIFE
THEATER

Robert 
Axelrod

“MY HOPE 
IS TO TELL A 
STORY AND 
HOPEFULLY 
OPEN PEOPLE’S 

EYES.”

— PLAYWRIGHT
ROBERT AXELROD 

