Claire van Kampen is a director, composer and playwright, whose composing credits include the Chekhov-inspired 2013 American drama film Days and Nights, the 2015 BBC adaptation of Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, and the 1989 performance of Hamlet by Mark Rylance, to whom van Kampen is married.
As a young woman, van Kampen trained as a pianist and then studied music theory, developing interests in the early-music scene (particularly Renaissance music) through to 20th century composition. She became the first musical director of both the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre. She has been the Director of Theatre Music at the Globe since its opening in 1997, scoring such innnovative adaptations as 2001's "jazz" Macbeth.