NEW YORK CITY: Theatre Communications Group (TCG), the national organization for theatre, has announced Seo Yun and Sveta Moroz as the 2025 recipients of the Willa Kim Costume Design Scholarship. Administered by TCG with support from the estate of costume designer Willa Kim, it provides talented costume designers in a university or professional training program with the opportunity to supplement their fine arts training in hand-drawing and painting. The scholarship honors Kim’s legacy and her life’s work as a pioneer, legend, and inspiration.
“The Willa Kim Costume Design Scholarship reflects TCG’s commitment to supporting visionary early-career artists whose work challenges, redefines, and uplifts the theatrical form through costume design,” said Emilya Cachapero, TCG co-executive director of national and global programming, in a statement. “Seo Yun and Sveta Moroz exemplify the spirit of this scholarship—rooted in artistic courage, cultural inquiry, and the belief that costume design is a vital mode of storytelling.”
Scholarship recipients receive up to $7,500 to be used toward tuition, registration fees, supplies, and/or travel expenses over a one-year period. The Willa Kim Costume Design Scholarship panel included Callie Floor, Maile Speetjens, and Sara Ryung Clement.
Seo Yun is a South Korean costume and scenic designer, visual artist, and craftsperson based in New York, currently pursuing a BFA at NYU Tisch. They are deeply inspired by the surreal, grotesque, and avant-garde and strive to create art of and for the fringe, exploring the liminality of queerness and immigration. They are passionate about serendipitous transdisciplinary collaboration across fields and mediums, bridging performance art, installation art, and traditional theatre.
Sveta Moroz is a costume designer currently pursuing her MFA at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale University. In 2022, she left Russia in protest of the war and rising political repression, arriving in the U.S. as an immigrant determined to rebuild both life and creative practice. She studied costume design at the Moscow Art Theatre School under Eleanora Maklakova; since relocating, she has worked extensively in the nonprofit theatre field, designing four productions with the Imaginists, a socially engaged experimental company in California. Her design process almost always begins with color, an intuitive and emotional anchor that guides her through silhouette, fabric, and texture.
Willa Kim was a costume designer for ballet, theatre, opera, and television. Among many honors were Tony Awards for Duke Ellington’s Sophisticated Ladies and Tommy Tune’s The Will Rogers Follies, and Tony nominations for Peter Allen’s Legs Diamond, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Song & Dance, Bob Fosse’s Dancin’, and Joel Grey’s Goodtime Charley. She won Drama Desk Awards for Jean Genet’s The Screens, Irene Fornes’ Promenade, and Sam Shepard’s Operation Sidewinder. Kim received lifetime achievement awards from the Fashion Institute of Technology and the United States Institute for Theatre Technology. The Theatre Development Fund honored her with the Irene Sharaff Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 2007, she was inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame.
Theatre Communications Group (TCG), the national organization for theatre, leads for a just and thriving theatre ecology. Since its founding in 1961, TCG’s constituency has grown from a handful of groundbreaking theatres to over 750 member theatres and affiliate organizations and over 3,000 individual members. Through its programs and services, TCG reaches over one million students, audience members, and theatre professionals each year.
