Claire van Kampen, a theater composer, director, playwright and the spouse of actor Mark Rylance, has died. She was 71.
Based on an announcement from her household, van Kampen died on Saturday morning — additionally Rylance’s sixty fifth birthday — in Kassel, Germany. The trigger was most cancers.
Van Kampen was the primary feminine musical director for the Royal Shakespeare Firm and the Royal Nationwide Theatre when she joined each corporations in 1986. There, her credit included composing the music for the 1989 manufacturing of “Hamlet” starring Rylance, who she wed that very same yr.
She was beforehand 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 labored as an inventive affiliate whereas Rylance was creative director till 2006. She then served because the Globe’s resident composer and musical advisor below creative director Dominic Dromgoole via 2015. Till her demise, van Kampen was a Globe affiliate and senior analysis fellow for early trendy music in addition to a inventive affiliate of the Previous Vic Theatre. In 2007, van Kampen acquired 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 5 Tony Awards, together with greatest play. In 2018, she made her debut as a director on the Globe with “Othello” starring André Holland.
Based on her bio on the Globe web site, van Kampen was presently engaged on adapting “Farinelli and the King” for the display screen and was additionally concerned in a movie concerning the painter Elaine de Kooning.
“We thank her for imbuing our lives together with her magic, music, laughter and love,” a press release from Mark and Juliet Rylance reads. “Ring the bell, sound the trumpets reverie, one thing is completed, one thing is starting. One of many nice clever ones has handed.”
