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A History of Japanese Theatre (1st edition)

is explained that the main source of yogic information for Stanislavsky were two books that drew as much from nineteenth century spiritualism as ancient Hindu sources. These two books — Hatha Yoga: Yogic Philosophy of the Physical Well-Being of a Man and Raja Yoga: The Teaching of Yogis about the Mental World of Man — were, in fact, written by an American lawyer, William Walter Atkinson, under the pseudonym Ramacharaka. They were published in 1909 and 1914, respectively, and, as Tcherkasski himself points out, rather than representing ‘ancient Indian philosophy and practice’, it was Western readers that the American lawyer addressed, ‘freely quoting European and American scholars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries’ (p. 60). Yoga is a generic term and in light of the development in the field of modern yoga studies, one would expect Tcherkasski, who is aware of these studies, to position Stanislavsky’s use and understanding of yoga consistently within a historical framework of the discipline’s development. An opportunity to clarify possible misconceptions about the specific kind of yoga that is being discussed in the book is offered in the Translator’s Note (p. 13). This note, however, though intended to clarify, suggests an equation between ‘classical Yoga’ and ideas about the kind of ‘Yoga’ that Stanislavsky had access to, an association which is not apt. Referring to Elizabeth De Michelis’ work, Tcherkasski himself draws attention to this point in Chapter 2, when he notes distinctions between ‘classical Yoga’ and ‘Modern Yoga’ (pp. 58–59). Such misconceptions and confusions in relation to the central term of reference in the book are compounded by several other references to different Eastern philosophies and practices — for example, to Zen (p. 22), Buddhism (p. 30, 37, 62) and Dukhobar practice (p. 31) — which, by inference or association, appear as synonyms for ‘Yoga’ in the text. Significantly, also, it seems that, however illuminating, the content of the material in Stanislavsky and Yoga frequently repeats existing scholarship. Most importantly, these include the similarities between key concepts in the System and Ramacharaka’s books that we find in Carnicke (1998, pp. 138–145; 2009, pp. 167–184), including the perceived similarities between the chakras and Stanislavsky’s rendition of the System in a drawing that resembles two lungs (Carnicke 1998, p. 142), as well as the significance of occultism in Russia during the late nineteenth–early twentieth century we find in White (2006, 2014). The author finishes his book with the significant claim that ‘today the union of Yoga and the Stanislavsky System determines — obviously or invisibly — contemporary actor training and theatre practice both in Russia and throughout the world’ (p. 114). Perhaps, in a future publication, he might consider utilising his extensive knowledge of, and access to, contemporary teaching of the System in Russia in order to flesh out the way the historic influence of yoga might play out in contemporary teachings or interpretations of the System today.