Dublin Fringe Festival and Rough Magic have commissioned six playwrights to write plays that will be staged in spring 2002. Their joint initiative, SEEDS, which was launched on Tuesday, aims to foster new writing and to invest in and develop the work of emerging artists. The six writers, selected from over 100 submissions, are: Ioanna Anderson, theatre director and author of Describe Joe and Why I Hate the Circus, staged by the Dublin Fringe Festival and Civic Theatre Tallaght respectively; Oonagh Kearney, also a director, and author of Calling Hilary and Urban Angels, staged at Cork's Granary Theatre; Aidan Harney, author of An Eye for An Eye, recently given a reading by Fishamble Theatre; Gerald Murphy, author of The Welcome, one of the Druid Debut plays, and a radio play, Stranger In the Night; Mark Doherty, whose TV scripts include the six-part RTE show, Couched; and Raymond Scannell, director and author of Breathing Water, seen at last year's Fringe, and Godfather 1/2, a Tall Tale. The writers will be given guidance from experienced Irish and British directors and from Rough Magic's Literary Manager, playwright Loughlin Deegan, and their work-in-progress will be workshopped during the year.