STAGE

Russian theater personalities said Tuesday that they plan to hold a regular world drama festival in Moscow similar to the Soviet Union’s international Tchaikovsky music competition. Alexander Svobodin, in charge of artistic policy for a new theater workers’ union, said that the festival would be named after 19th-Century Russian writer Anton Chekhov. It has not been decided when the festival will start or how often it will be held. The union, called the Soviet Union of Theater Workers, was formed last November with the aim of involving the theater in Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s drive for social and economic change.