We are delighted to be touring the full-length version of this powerful and emotional story,” says Elliot Montgomery, Octopus Dream Theatre Artistic Director. We’re delighted that you are studying the play that tells Dan’s story. Thank you for buying directly from DSMF – due to our publisher’s discount this will generate a small donation to our drug education work 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.

Neither play text nor production overplays the drama. It’s all there in the controlled, understated performances and the poignancy of the filmed interviews. 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! 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 CompanyDrama is an incredibly powerful way to communicate important messages to young people, and Mark Wheeller’s play has become a core part of our vision to enable young people to understand the risks, and potential consequences and impact of experimenting with drugs. The final play, however, is as much about love, friendship, forgiveness and loss, as it is about drugs. I Love You Mum, I Promise I Won't Die is a beautiful and deeply touching tribute to a much-loved boy. An 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.” 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 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. Don’t miss Mark Wheeller’s beautifully-written play and Octopus Dream’s acclaimed production, touring to theatres across the country for the first time. I Love You Mum, I Promise I Won't Die is a true story about Daniel Spargo-Mabbs, a popular schoolboy who tragically died at 16 after taking ecstasy at an illegal rave in 2014. 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 words of the title are the last ones spoken by sixteen-year-old Daniel Spargo-Mabbs to his mother. One evening in January 2014, Daniel’s parents thought he was going to a friend’s house. He actually attended an illegal rave and later died after taking MDMA. The filmed version of ‘I Love You, Mum..’ aired on the Edinburgh Fringe Player in 2021 and received critical acclaim: 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. 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.