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

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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. 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. 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. We provide planning and resources for evidence-based drug and alcohol education to be delivered by teachers in schools as part of Personal, Social, Health and Economic (PSHE) education. Three programmes offer a spiral curriculum from years 7-18, years 9-11 and sixth forms, which is age-appropriate and builds on prior learning, and is adapted to be delivered in lessons or shorter form-time sessions.

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.” At the beginning of the film, Dan's parents Fiona and Tim Spargo-Mabbs fondly describe their son. They talk about how funny he was, how kind and how desperately missed he is. The film then switches to a stage where a cast of four perform the words of Dan's friends as they recount what happened. 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.We are delighted to be touring the full-length version of this powerful and emotional story,” says Elliot Montgomery, Octopus Dream Theatre Artistic Director. 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.

This DVD shows the original 2016 OYT production of I Love You, Mum – I Promise I Won’t Die as premiered at the Brit School, directed by author, Mark Wheeller. Normally when you watch a play the actual characters who are being ‘performed’ aren’t there. I was sitting in the same row as the people who were being re-created on stage and it was an unusual experience. Not only was this performance re-telling something very upsetting it was being re-told from over 300,000 words that all those audience members had said. The cast, from Oasis Youth Theatre worked as an amazing ensemble but stand out performances came from Lewis Evans and Natasha Thomas who took on the roles of Dan’s best friend and Dan’s mum respectively with such ease. Having Mark Wheeller’s interviewer words written into the script gives as a clever narration that helpfully shaped the dialogue into a narrative helping the audience follow the story. The set was simple with six cubes moved around at pace to create new scenes and also used in slow motion during the opening rave scene to great effect; flying around the stage with the chemical formula for MDMA projected upstage certainly marked the moment. The upstage screens also projected text message conversations and photographs of Dan throughout which disintegrated into flying sycamore seeds – symbolic of growing goodness from such sadness. Although the play revolves around Dan he has no lines and he is imaginatively represented throughout by a blue zip-hoodie that is sometimes worn by the 15-strong cast who play him in turn. 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: 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.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. 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.

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