And who I am I to be remembered?

I’m just a tiny dent in history of BBC.

Famous for being forgotten.

 

Sleeping Beauty is based on the true story of Joyce Carol Vincent - a real, young, bright, beautiful woman- who came home from Christmas shopping in 2003, sat on the sofa, and died. She was not found until January 2006, almost three years later. Her remains were only discovered after bailiffs entered her flat to collect on unpaid bills. The television was still on to BBC1. This is where Sleeping Beauty begins, on the day of Vincent’s death. 

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Margarita Marx’s play is not a documentary or a biography, rather it is a lament from an unsettled soul. Channeling Vincent’s voice, Marx speaks and signs from the other side of the divide between life and death. In Marx’s telling Joyce is both a person and a vessel, a voice for something broader, more frightening, and closer to home. In that way, Sleeping Beauty sits squarely between two of the great forms of lament: the Greek tragedy and the ghost story. 

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The play begins when the audience enters. The foreroom is well lit and the walls are drawn with a mural by the artist, depicting newspaper clippings about Vincent‘s case as well as snippets taken from the neighbourhood, where she lived and died. The audience might be fooled into thinking that they entered a research project in the form of an art installation. But then a small white curtain at the back of the gallery is pulled open, and the audience is directed into a second room. It is dark except for a newspaper headline back-projected across the theater curtain. They find a seat, and after a few uncomfortable minutes the play begins. 

 

Woman dead in flat for 3 years. 

Woman dead in flat for 3 years.

Woman dead in flat for 3 years.

 

We never see the performer and the curtain never opens. We only hear Marx’s voice, sometimes speaking, sometimes singing, sometimes blending into the ambient chatter of the television. There is only the sound of her voice emanating from behind the curtain, and video projections: abstract imagery, news clips, shadows, occasional pulses of light. The performance comes to us through a veil. 

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Over the course of the three years of Joyce’s confinement, BBC 1 is blaring on the television, and the repeating broadcast becomes the chorus of the play. The television does not acknowledge Joyce of course, that comes later, but only narrates the world that goes on without her; Pope John Paul II dies (April 2, 2005). Charles and Camilla are married (April 9, 2005). The London Underground is bombed (July 7, 2005). History continues, marked by death, union, and terror, while Joyce lies dead and unnoticed.

 

And when the repo men will come

and when they break in

I will surprise them with the sweetest bony smile

and they will breathe the strongest perfume of their lives.

Oh, they will remember.

my last kiss.

they won't forget.

 

When the play ends, it doesn’t conclude with her discovery. We never hear the door break in. There is no moment of revelation, redemption, or closure. Yet we feel her release. The final movement is a dance: a film of Annabelle Whitford Moore, an early vaudeville performer recorded on hand-tinted film in the 1890s. She’s swirling, light catching her silks, her limbs turning into ribbons of movement. The image is ghostlike, but joyful. Angelic.

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Sleeping Beauty concludes with a photograph of Joyce, the real woman. A final reminder that this was not just a metaphor, not just a tragedy in form. This happened to someone.

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The audience returns to the front room of the gallery. The lighting has changed, lamps are lit. The gallery space, which before had felt neutral and clean is now a living room. Tea is served and cookies are offered. We are back in the world of the living—but changed. Something in us has shifted.

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Marx comes out from behind the small white curtain, not as Joyce, but as herself. She speaks calmly and people ask questions. Often, they want to know what went wrong. Why didn’t someone check on her? Was she sick? Was she a loner? No, she had a job. She was social. She had friends. She had been in an abusive relationship—that may be why she didn’t share her new address with anyone.

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 Nothing in her story is extreme. That’s what’s so chilling. It didn’t take much for her to slip away.

Eventually, the audience questions turn inward. Who have we lost touch with? Who have we forgotten? That’s the power of the play. It’s not about a single person. It’s about the fear that we could be that person. That we are already, in some small way, that person.