Tony nominee Claire van Kampen died January 18 of cancer. She was 71 years old.

A trained pianist with an acute interest in Renaissance music, Ms. Van Kampen joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1986, which was quickly followed by her joining the Royal National Theatre in 1987, making her the first female music director to work with both companies. In that same span of time, Ms. Van Kampen met the actor Mark Rylance: By 1989, the pair were married, and became inseparably close collaborators on and off the stage.

The pair were intertwined dramatically through the Royal Shakespeare Company, where Ms. Van Kampen served as the artistic associate to Rylance from 1986 to 2006, although Ms. Van Kampen stayed on with the company through 2015 as a musical consultant and resident composer for his successor, Dominic Dromgoole. When Shakespeare's Globe Theatre opened in 1997, Rylance became the first artistic director, with Ms. Van Kampen serving as the director of Theatre Music. Again with Rylance, Ms. Van Kampen co-founded the Phoebus Cart Theatre Company, which specialized in Shakespearean performance.

In the 21st century, Ms. Van Kampen poured her artistry into creating the music for a number of commercial theatre productions, including Broadway productions of True West, Boeing-Boeing, La Bête, Richard III, and Twelfth Night. Rylance starred in all but True West.

Perhaps her greatest achievement came in 2015, when her play Farinelli and the King, which depicted the relationship between the Spanish King Philip V and his castrato singer Farinelli, premiered. Enjoying sell-out runs in London and on Broadway, Ms. Van Kampen wrote the play for Rylance, bringing in five Tony nominations, including one for Best Play.

In 2015, she served as a historical music advisor and arranger of the Tudor music utilized in the BBC television broadcast of Wolf Hall, and in 2016, she tried her hand at directing Rylance in Nice Fish at Brooklyn's St. Ann's Warehouse, which later transferred to London. Her ballet, Uncaged, premiered at the New York Theatre Ballet in 2020.

At the time of her passing, Ms. Van Kampen and Rylance were collaborating on several projects, including an unnamed historical drama for Steven Spielberg at Amblin Entertainment. It had long been rumored that Spielberg and Ms. Van Kampen were to collaborate on a screen version of Farinelli and the King, although a film version has yet to materialize.

Ms. Van Kampen passed away on Rylance's 65th birthday. She was predeceased by her daughter Nataasha in 2012, and is survived by Rylance, her first husband (architect Christopher van Kampen), and her daughter Juliet. Information on public memorials in London and New York are forthcoming.