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Claire Louise van Kampen, Lady Rylance (born 3 November 1953) is an English director, composer, and playwright. She composed the music for her husband Mark Rylance's 1989 performance as Hamlet and shared the 2007 Sam Wanamaker Award with him and theatrical designer Jenny Tiramani. Her composing credits include music for productions of the plays Days and Nights and Boeing-Boeing.

In 2015, she was a historical music advisor and arranger of Tudor music on the BBC TV series Wolf Hall.

Early life

Van Kampen was born in Marylebone, London, England. She originally trained as a pianist at the Royal College of Music for five years, receiving a John Land scholarship. As a girl, she met David Munrow, a recorder player and pioneer of the early music scene in England, and became interested in Renaissance music.

Studying music theory with Dr. Ruth Gipps, she also specialised in the performance of 20th-century music, premiering works by today's composers.

Career

In 1986, she joined the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal National Theatre, becoming the first female musical director with both companies. In 1990, she co-founded the theatre company Phoebus Cart with her husband Mark Rylance.

Since the opening of the Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in 1997, van Kampen has been the Director of Theatre Music, creating both period and contemporary music for 30 of the Globe's productions – including the 'jazz' Macbeth in 2001, and The Golden Ass in 2002, which contained a 30-minute opera Cupid and Psyche.

In the spring of 2007, she received the Vero Nihil Verius Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Arts, conferred upon her by Concordia University in Oregon, United States. Together with Rylance and theatrical designer Jenny Tiramani, she received the 2007 Sam Wanamaker Award for her founding work during the opening ten years at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre.

Farinelli and the King is van Kampen's historical play about the relationship between Farinelli, the castrato, and the Spanish King Philippe V, first performed at Sam Wanamaker Playhouse in February and March 2015, then at the Duke of York's Theatre in the West End of London from September to December 2015, with Mark Rylance as Philippe V. It received six Olivier Award nominations, including Best New Play. In 2016 she directed Mark Rylance in Nice Fish at the St. Ann's Warehouse, New York City. The production subsequently transferred to the Harold Pinter Theatre

Personal life

Van Kampen was previously married to an architect, Chris van Kampen, with whom she had two daughters, the actress Juliet Rylance and the late filmmaker Nataasha van Kampen. She met Mark Rylance in 1987, and they married in Oxfordshire on 21 December 1989.

Her daughter Nataasha died of a suspected brain haemorrhage on a flight from New York in July 2012 at the age of 28.

Theatre (selected credits)

References

1. Cooper, Michael (29 November 2013). "Is This a Sackbut I Hear Before Me". The New York Times. Retrieved 23 February 2015.
2. "Claire van Kampen | Shakespeare's Globe". Shakespeare's Globe. Retrieved 14 June 2024.
3. Rickwald, Bethany (20 January 2016). "St. Ann's Warehouse Extends Nice Fish and A Streetcar Named Desire". Retrieved 30 March 2017.
4. Longman, Will (16 September 2016). "Mark Rylance's Nice Fish extends by three weeks". Retrieved 30 March 2017.
5. Gurewitsch, Matthew (12 January 2010). "A Bridge of Two: In the Wings with Christian Camargo and Juliet Rylance".
6. Schulman, Michael (18 November 2013). "Play On". The New Yorker. Retrieved 22 January 2015.
7. Baker, Richard Anthony (1 August 2012). "Nataasha van Kampen". The Stage. Retrieved 23 January 2015.

External links

• Claire van Kampen at IMDb
• Claire's Lecture in a series on The Building of the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse – Part 5: Music in the new theatre, August 2013
• Claire and Mark on A.R.T. theatre in New York
• Claire's composition for a Midsummer Night's Dream, here performed in Taiwan
• Claire's composition for the movie Days and Nights

• Living people
• 1953 births
• English women classical composers
• English classical composers
• Women film score composers
• Musicians from London
• British theatre directors
• British women theatre directors
• British dramatists and playwrights
• English women dramatists and playwrights
• Wives of knights