Claire van Kampen

Director, Composer
Globe Associate and Senior Research Fellow for early Modern Music
Creative Associate of the Old Vic Theatre

Claire Van Kampen is a multi-award winning composer, writer, performer and director. Van Kampen was originally trained as a pianist at the Royal College of Music for five years where she was the recipient of a John Land scholarship.

Van Kampen is the first woman to occupy the positions of musical director of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal National Theatre. From 1997, she was the Director of Theatre Music at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, serving as Artistic Associate to Mark Rylance from 1996-2006, and as musical consultant and resident composer to the subsequent Artistic Director Dominic Dromgoole from 2007-2015 - composing period and contemporary music for over 30 productions. She is currently the Globe Associate and Senior Research Fellow for early Modern Music and Creative Associate of the Old Vic Theatre, London. In 2018, van Kampen made her debut as Director at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre with Othello, starring André Holland in the title role.

As a composer van Kampen has created original scores for Broadway productions of True West (2000), Boeing-Boeing (2008), La Bete (2010), Twelfth Night and Richard III (2013/14) and her own authored play Farinelli and the King (2017/18) –which was nominated for 6 Olivier and 5 Tony Awards, including Best Play.

Van Kampen has strong artistic links with choreographer Antonia Franceschi after van Kampen's debut piece She Holds Out Her Hand (2018). Their collaborations include van Kampen’s ballet Uncaged, premiered with the New York Theatre Ballet Company in February 2020, and Riccardo Broschi’s 1730 opera Idaspe for Pittsburgh’s Quantum Theater. Further ahead they will join forces for van Kampen's new play White Swan/Black Swan to be workshopped in collaboration with the Royal Ballet.

In the 23/24 season, van Kampen directed Les Fetes de Thalie for Opera Lafayette in New York and Washington & composed the music for a new production of Pericles for the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Further ahead, plans include directing 'The Traviata project' in partnership with the Royal Opera, Intermission Youth and co-directed with Darren Raymond, and co-writing ‘Steel’– a television series for Amblin, with Mark Rylance. Van Kampen’s other upcoming film and television work includes a film about the painter Elaine de Kooning to be filmed in New York, and arranging the historical on-screen music for the BBC’s ‘The Mirror and the Light’- the sequel to ‘Wolf Hall’.

In 2007, van Kampen was awarded the Vero Nihil Verius Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Arts from Concordia College in Oregon, United States and the Sam Wanamaker Award for her founding work during the first 10 years of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. She was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Music by Brunel University in 2019.

2024/25 season / 439 words. Not to be altered without permission.