Claire van Kampen, a theater composer, director, playwright and the wife of actor Mark Rylance, has died. She was 71.
According to an announcement from her family, van Kampen died on Saturday morning — also Rylance’s 65th birthday — in Kassel, Germany. The cause was cancer.
Van Kampen was the first female musical director for the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal National Theatre when she joined both companies in 1986. There, her credits included composing the music for the 1989 production of “Hamlet” starring Rylance, who she wed that same year.
She was previously married to the architect Chris van Kampen, with whom she had two daughters, the actor and producer Juliet Rylance and Nataasha van Kampen, a budding filmmaker who died in 2012.
When the Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre opened in 1997, van Kampen worked as an artistic associate while Rylance was artistic director until 2006. She then served as the Globe’s resident composer and musical consultant under artistic director Dominic Dromgoole through 2015. Until her death, van Kampen was a Globe associate and senior research fellow for early modern music as well as a creative associate of the Old Vic Theatre. In 2007, van Kampen received the Sam Wanamaker Award for her pioneering work in Shakespearean theater alongside Rylance and theatrical designer Jenny Tiramini.
As a playwright, van Kampen wrote “Farinelli and the King,” which debuted in 2015 and was nominated for six Olivier Awards and five Tony Awards, including best play. In 2018, she made her debut as a director at the Globe with “Othello” starring André Holland.
According to her bio on the Globe website, van Kampen was currently working on adapting “Farinelli and the King” for the screen and was also involved in a film about the painter Elaine de Kooning.
“We thank her for imbuing our lives with her magic, music, laughter and love,” a statement from Mark and Juliet Rylance reads. “Ring the bell, sound the trumpets reverie, something is done, something is beginning. One of the great wise ones has passed.”
