Alexa Punnamkuzhyil ‘08

Senior Alexa Punnamkuzhyil, a comparative literature and creative writing major, has received a 2008 Compton Mentor Fellowship, which extends from June 2008 to June 2009, and carries with it an award of $36,000.

One of only 10 graduating seniors across the nation selected to win the coveted fellowship this year, Alexa will travel to Kerala, India, her ancestral homeland, to engage community members in the creation of an extensive sexual-health campaign she has designed addressing such issues as AIDS/HIV awareness and prevention, the proper use of male protection, and domestic violence.

The keystone of the campaign, titled Theatrical Education: Global and Local, will be the production of a series of six mini-films whose direction will be mentored by award-winning Indian film director and attorney Ligy J. Pullappally.

The project grew out of Alexa’s concern about the increase in sexually transmitted diseases, domestic violence, and other under-communicated issues at home and abroad. “There is a very personal side to this project for me also,” she says, “as I have seen members of my family in India struggle with many of the issues that are going to be addressed in these films.”

Her biggest challenge, she says, will be dealing with the transition between the cultural values of her fellow Malayalis and her belief in international human rights and equality. Supported by extensive sexual-education theater experience, however, Alexa eagerly welcomes the challenge. For the last eight years, she has worked at promoting comprehensive sexuality education through theatre performances and classroom presentations, first in her hometown of Arcata, California, and now at Oberlin as a student staff member of the Center for Leadership in Health Promotion.

“In addition to being a dynamic campus leader,” says Director Lori Morgan Flood, “Alexa has helped the center extend its reach to students throughout the area by starting a theatrical education troupe, Typecast, which has been performing in local schools and youth groups for the past two years. She recently took the troupe to Lorain’s Southview high school where the members presented a show to some 500 students.”

“I think that Oberlin students are beginning to warm to the idea of theatrical and peer education, a mode of health education that doesn't involve white coats and specialists,” Alexa says. She hopes to educate a new crop of activists at Oberlin next year, when she returns to teach a seminar on theatrical education and its global and local applications during spring semester. As the final class project, participants will produce a video sexual-education curriculum tailored to students in  Cleveland area middle and high schools.  

Alexa engages her audiences by first visiting the students and discussing the issues informally. “Each audience is different,” she says, “so by involving its members from the very beginning, we learn what makes them laugh, what makes them cry, what are their particular attitudes and concerns. All of this infuses our performance and hopefully spurs them to greater reflection about their own lives, especially about topics like sex and violence.”

She plans to use a similar method to engage audiences in Kerala, a state with a population of 29 million people whose 100 percent literacy rate and distrust of government programs, she says, makes it open to learning about sexual issues from non-governmental sources. Promoted first by trailers and ads, the mini-films will be shown on television and in movie theatres and modern entertainment venues in Kerala followed by public discussions.