We’re delighted that you are studying the play that tells Dan’s story.

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This item is for FIFTEEN copies. You can buy copies of the full ILYM play script here in packs of 1, 5, 10 or 15.  p&p costs are included in the prices shown.

In May 2014, just months after Dan died, the DSM Foundation commissioned award-winning playwright Mark Wheeller to write a verbatim play that told his story, so other young people could learn the lessons he sadly no longer could, and make choices that would keep them safe. The title takes Dan’s joking last words to his mum, Fiona, before he left home for what turned out to be the last time: ‘I Love You, Mum – I Promise I Won’t Die’. Mark worked on the very first production with his talented youth theatre company in Southampton, Oasis Youth Theatre, and the play had its first public performances in March 2016, with previews in Southampton and its premiere at the BRIT school, just a mile from Dan’s home in Croydon, South London.

Dan loved drama, and his school drama teacher, Izzy Forrester, became one of the first Trustees of the DSM Foundation. It was her idea, in those early months after Dan died, that we consider using drama as a means of communicating our important messages to young people. Mark Wheeller was the number one choice for her. She had taught his plays for many years – Dan had studied ‘Legal Weapon’ himself at school – and she had witnessed the power of his writing on young people. She checked with Dan’s parents, sent Mark an email, and the result is this moving piece of theatre, that captures so beautifully the joyful life and tragic death of Dan, and captivates audiences of all ages.

The play was published by Bloomsbury (Methuen Drama) in 2017. Since then, it has been being studied, taught and performed in schools, colleges and community youth theatres across the UK and as far away as Australia, Tasmania and Vancouver. It was performed at the Edinburgh Fringe festival in 2018 by Lloyd Theatre Arts, gaining official five-star reviews, and again as part of the online Fringe in 2021 with TiU Theatre’s filmed production, again getting great reviews.

We’re delighted that from September 2022 the play will be one of seven set texts on the Eduqas GCSE drama syllabus, alongside Shakespeare, JB Priestly, Malorie Blackman and Benjamin Zephaniah. We hope this will bring the play to many more drama studios and classrooms across the country and around the world, with its important messages of risk, choice and consequence, friendship, forgiveness, love and loss.