I Love You, Mum - I Promise I Won't Die (Plays for Young People)

Product Information

Two months after he died, the DSM Foundation commissioned playwright Mark Wheeller to write a verbatim play about what happened to Dan. Published in 2017, the play has been studied, taught and performed worldwide with the play having a successful run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2018. This new high-quality digital production has been filmed by Yorkshire-based Tie It Up Theatre to translate the live performance to screen. The tour is being supported by drug education charity The Daniel Spargo-Mabbs Foundation. Commenting on the play and support for the tour, the Director & Founder – and Dan’s mum - Fiona Spargo-Mabbs OBE, said:

In May 1997 Daniel Spargo-Mabbs was born. His parents, like every parent wondered what he will achieve, what job will he do? In January 2014 I was pregnant and my whole world was going to change; just 30 miles away Fiona and Tim Spargo-Mabbs’ world was about to change dramatically too their son, Daniel, died on January 20th 2014. You shouldn’t have your children go before you. How do you cope with something so tragic? Fiona and Tim have done more than cope they have set up a foundation in Daniel’s name ‘The Daniel Spargo-Mabbs Foundation’ ( www.dsmfoundation.org.uk) and over the last 18 months they have worked with playwright Mark Wheeller to have Daniel’s story turned into a verbatim play as a performance to educate young people – they want the production to tour schools so that ‘many good things can come from this very bad thing.’ This play has a message much bigger than the assumption ‘drugs are bad’ it shows the power of friendship, trust, family and love and how one person’s actions can have dire consequences on all of those. It was seven years ago this January that Dan came and found me before he headed off to a party, so he could give me a hug, tell me he loved me, and make the usual joke, promising he wouldn’t die. The next day we were in the liver intensive care unit at Kings, watching him do just that. Now these last words of Dan’s are the title of a play, that teenagers across the UK and around the world will be sitting in exam halls answering questions about. An important and often overlooked route into the industry, especially for many non-performing roles. Susan Elkin has some suggestions. Theatre is like an iceberg. For every role on stage there are probably at least half a dozen technicians you can’t see. And the industry has been telling us for decades that there are skills shortages […] School ShowsAn abridged version has toured to many secondary schools across the country and has been seen by thousands of young people, but we always wanted to share the full version with a theatre audience. It’s an important, honest and deeply touching human story of how our choices can have such a huge impact on ourselves and our loved ones.”

I’d had a conversation specifically with Dan about ecstasy. It’s one of the things you do as a parent, isn’t it? Wear your helmet when you’re out on your bike, you know, don’t take drugs. To be honest, I was more worried about him being safe on his bike than at a party with his friends. TiE It Up Theatre has been touring since 2018 and in that time has completed three tours of Mark Wheeller’s play ‘Hard to Swallow’; two tours in Scotland and two tours in England of the abridged version of ‘I Love You, Mum – I Promise I Won’t Die’; the company has also produced two as-live film versions of both plays which are widely used in schools. Post show Q & A: After the performance on Friday 16 June, the cast will be joined on stage by Fiona & Tim Spargo-Mabbs, Dan’s parents and founders of the Daniel Spargo-Mabbs Foundation drug education charity. Along with questions to the cast, Fiona & Tim will take questions about the play, their son Dan and the important work of their drug education charity the DSM Foundation, which has been instrumental in changing the landscape around drug education across the UK. This event is open to all who have attended that evening’s performance. It’s absolutely amazing, and more than we could ever have imagined when we started working as hard as we could to try to prevent anyone else’s child come to harm from drugs. So many more teenagers will get to experience this play with its important messages of choice and risk, of friendship, love, loss, forgiveness. And come to feel they know Dan, and to care about him and what happened to him, because that’s what the play seems to do.

About the contributors

We were so excited to hear just before Christmas that Mark Wheeller’s play that tells Dan’s story will become a GCSE drama set text next year. ’I Love You, Mum – I Promise I Won’t Die’ will be in great company on the Eduqas syllabus. I love you Mum and I promise I won’t die is intended to be performed as two separate one act plays, but I feel it works just as well, if not better, as a two act play. At the end of such an amazing performance you would typically expect a standing ovation, but this was so emotionally draining you felt too numb to stand and on reflection that is more fitting than bursting into rapturous applause. Dan was the younger son of Fiona and Tim Spargo-Mabbs, living with them and his older brother Jacob in Croydon, South London. He was in Year 12 of Archbishop Tenison CE High School in Croydon, which he’d attended since Year 7. Dan was bright, articulate, funny, chatty, popular and talented; a big, engaging, much loved character as illustrated by him being voted Prom King at the end of year 11 by an overwhelming majority. He was embedded in his school community – playing in the band for the school show just before Christmas in year 12 – as well as his local and church communities, running errands for the elderly people to whom he delivered on his daily paper round, and involved in youth work at the church he attended with his family. He had a real social conscience, having recently signed up to the bone marrow donor register and becoming a member of Amnesty International. This is such an exciting development for us as a drug education charity, and also as Dan’s mum and dad. We commissioned Mark Wheeller to turn Dan’s story into a play as part of our passionate commitment when Dan died to prevent any harm happening to anyone else’s family from drugs. This first tour to theatres is taking the play to a whole new audience outside schools, where it’s been touring for the last few years. We really hope this will mean families will come together and have conversations at home that help other teenagers keep themselves safe - but it’s also a beautiful play and a fantastic production, creating an opportunity for anyone who loves great theatre to experience it, and to get to know our Dan.”

This DVD shows the original 2016 OYT production as premiered at the Brit School, directed by author, Mark Wheeller. Broadway World “ I Love You Mum, I Promise I Won't Die is a beautiful and deeply touching tribute to a much-loved boy” Dan is cool, clever and smart. A talented, creative “lovely boy” with a passion for helping others who’s always on the side of the underdog. Everyone loves Dan and at 16, he has plans, plenty of them - just losing his life isn't one of them. I Love You, Mum – I Promise I Won’t Die was commissioned by the DSM Foundation to raise awareness about the danger of party drugs. It is a fast-paced, tragic, vibrant piece of verbatim theatre, which should engage teenage readers, audiences and performers alike. Don’t miss Mark Wheeller’s beautifully-written play and Octopus Dream’s acclaimed production, touring to theatres for the first time, following highly successful tours to secondary schools across the country.For ‘I Love You, Mum – I Promise I Won’t Die’, Mark used verbatim theatre to take the actual words of Dan’s family and friends, recorded in a series of interviews, which were painstakingly transcribed and then turned into the script of this two-act play. He took eighteen months developing the script and performance with Oasis Youth Theatre, based in Southampton. Through his incredible skill, and the huge talent and commitment of the young people and team of Oasis Youth Theatre, these raw words were transformed into a stunning performance that brought the audience to tears at each of its performances. Susan Elkin paid a visit to Half Moon theatre in London’s East End to chat with CEO Chris Elwell about their extensive education outreach and innovative theatre programmes. Half Moon Theatre sits in the heart of Limehouse in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, spitting distance from the DLR and mainline station. Formerly a pretty […] National Youth Theatre Rep Company The production is incredibly powerful, and aimed at students from years 9-13. It explores issues of choice, risk and consequence, but also friendship, love and loss, and the impact of our choices on others. The purpose of this piece of work is clearly to honour Dan and ensure he is remembered for being a kind and loving popular boy rather than the headline "ecstasy teen death". It also serves as a very important warning to those experimenting with drugs how easily things can go wrong and I can see why it has had such success in schools. Dan is cool, clever and smart. A talented, creative and “lovely boy” with a passion for helping others who’s always on the side of the underdog. Everyone loves Dan and at 16, he has plans, plenty of them - just losing his life isn’t one of them.

I Love You, Mum – I Promise I Won’t Die is a verbatim play told through the words of Daniel’s family and friends. The play allows Dan’s story to be told by the people who loved him and knew him the best, his family and friends. In July 2016 the DSM Foundation commissioned Mark Wheeller to adapt ‘I Love You, Mum – I Promise I Won’t Die’, to take into schools, colleges and the community as a Theatre in Education tour. From Spring term 2017 and for the following three spring terms, Stopwatch Theatre with a cast of four professional actors took performances of the play, followed by interactive drug and alcohol education workshops, into schools across London. In spring 2020 this powerful production was taken on by Wizard Theatre, following the closure of Stopwatch, and by the end of the tour reached more than 50,000 young people, as well as parents, carers and professionals at public performances. In January 2014 16-year-old Daniel Spargo-Mabbs went to an illicit all-night rave, overdosed on ecstasy and died. Daniel was intelligent, funny, given to moments of wild clowning, but essentially serious, a member of Amnesty International and devoted to other charitable work. A hugely popular figure, he was not the sort of boy you expect this to happen to.For anyone who recalls the 1990’s story of Leah Betts and the frankly devastating photograph of her splashed all over the newspaper Daniel is sadly the 21st century reminder that drugs still destroy lives and as members of society we still need to drum home the message but this time it isn’t with a headline life support photograph it’s in the form of this wonderful play – get it into your local community now! Workshops focus on informed decision making and risk awareness. They aim to leave no student in doubt that they always have a choice about the decisions they make and that the risks associated with illegal substance use can be incredibly high. They learn some facts that will help them make informed decisions and some tools to put their decisions into practice in a pressured situation. The filmed version of ‘I Love You, Mum..’ aired on the Edinburgh Fringe Player in 2021 and received critical acclaim: