Dr Jakub Boguszak

Research groups

Research interests

• casting practices in Shakespearean productions
• actors' parts and documents of performance in the early modern period
• the works of Ben Jonson, printed and performed
• critical editions of Shakespeare's works in the twenty-first century
• the history and theory of animation

Current research

Dr Boguszak's new monograph, The Self-Centred Art: Ben Jonson’s Parts in Performance, continues the work undertaken in recent years by James J. Marino, Paul Menzer, Simon Palfrey, Tiffany Stern, Evelyn Tribble, and others to put to use what is now known about the purpose, distribution, and usage of early modern actors’ parts. The book applies the new methodology of reading ‘in parts’, or reconstituting early modern plays ‘in parts’, to the body of plays written by Ben Jonson. The aim is to offer a reconsideration of Jonson as a man of theatre, interested not only in the presentation of his works in print, but also in their production at the Globe and at Blackfriars.

Dr Boguszak's current research project explores of casting in modern productions of Shakespeare’s plays. The work intends to show how the aesthetic preferences as well as practical and economic considerations that inform casting decisions in Shakespearean productions have changed over the last eighty years, and how the process of casting—a matter of representation as well as interpretation—has become one of the great points of contention in studies of Shakespeare in performance in the twenty-first century.