Theatre Communications Group Names 2025 Recipients of the Willa Kim Costume Design Scholarship

Theatre Communications Group 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 Willa Kim, the scholarship provides exceptionally talented costume designers who are enrolled in a university or professional training program with the opportunity to supplement their fine arts training in hand-drawing and painting. The scholarship honors Costume Designer Willa Kim's legacy and her life's work as a pioneer, legend, and inspiration for many of today's theatre artists.

“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, Co-Executive Director of National and Global Programming at Theatre Communications Group. “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.”

The 2025 Willa Kim Costume Design Scholarship recipients include:

Seo Yun (they/she/he) 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 (or Weird Gross Gay Art) 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. Her artistic journey began in Russia and continues in the United States, shaped by classical training and lived experience. 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. Sveta studied costume design at the Moscow Art Theater School under Eleanora Maklakova, who taught her the foundations of historical research and a deep sensitivity to color, fabric, and form. Her internship at museums in Saint Petersburg, including the Hermitage, grounded her design practice in material history. Since relocating, she has worked extensively in the not-for-profit theatre field, designing four productions with The Imaginists, a socially engaged experimental company in California. That work reinforced her belief in theatre as a space for inclusion, urgency, and transformation. Her design process almost always begins with color—an intuitive and emotional anchor that guides her through silhouette, fabric, and texture. Sveta sees costume as a bridge between the historical and the contemporary, creating designs that hold meaning, provoke feeling, and bring the story to life.

Scholarship recipients receive up to $7,500 to be used towards 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. For more information about the Willa Kim Costume Design Scholarship and past recipients, visit tcg.org.

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; Obie Awards for Robert Lowell's The Old Glory and Lanie Robertson's Woman Before A Glass; and Emmy Awards for the PBS broadcasts of Michael Smuin's ballets The Tempest and A Song For Dead Warriors. Ms. 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. TCG offers networking and knowledge-building opportunities through research, communications, and events, including the annual TCG National Conference, one of the largest nationwide gatherings of theatre people; awards grants and scholarships to theatre companies and individual artists; advocates on the federal level; and through the Global Theater Initiative, TCG's partnership with the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics, serves as the U.S. Center of the International Theatre Institute. TCG is North America's largest independent trade publisher of dramatic literature, with 21 Pulitzer Prizes for Drama on the TCG booklist. It also publishes the award-winning American Theatre magazine and ARTSEARCH, the essential source for a career in the arts. TCG believes its vision of “a better world for theatre, and a better world because of theatre” can be achieved through individual and collective action, adaptive and responsive leadership, and equitable representation in all areas of practice. TCG is led by co-Executive Directors, Emilya Cachapero, LaTeshia Ellerson, and Alisha Tonsic.