Clairevan Kampen
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Keiron Cooke
Representation
About Claire
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 and the first woman to occupy the positions of musical director of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal National Theatre.
From 1997, Claire was the Director of Theatre Music at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre - 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.
As a composer Claire 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.
Claire has strong artistic links with choreographer Antonia Franceschi after Claire’s debut piece She Holds Out Her Hand (2018). Their collaborations include Claire's ballet Uncaged, premiered with the New York Theatre Ballet Company in February 2020, and Riccardo’s Broschi’s 1730 opera Idaspe for Pittsburgh’s Quantum Theater.
In the 23/24 season, Claire directs Les Fetes de Thalie for Opera Lafayette in New York and Washington, composes the music for a new production of Pericles for the Royal Shakespeare Company & makes her Aldeburgh Festival directorial debut.
Representation
Season Highlights
News
Press
Farinelli and the King
Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, LondonAug 2015Plays about mad kings are always popular. After Alan Bennett’s portrait of George III, we now have Claire van Kampen’s fascinating study of the healing impact of music on Spain’s French-born Philippe V. With Mark Rylance as the king, the evening is guaranteed success, but what it really proves is how ideally suited this intimate space is to the mix of drama and music. The story Van Kampen has to tell is itself extraordinary...It all makes for a richly unusual evening that not only demonstrates music’s curative power for a mad king but its ability to offer spiritual uplift to just about everyone else.
- The Guardian
- 23 February 2015