Of linen and night

A shadow theater along the Bayeux Tapestry

By the Compagnie 14:20 - Clément Debailleul and Philippe Beau – shadow puppeteers

What if the Bayeux Tapestry was not only a historical testimony, but already a moving image, a narrative sewn with light and forgetfulness? This project proposes to approach it like a long traveling shot, a film before its time, where the shadows reveal what the thread does not say.

Through the magic of shadow theater, the embroideries come to life, escape the linen, and dance in the light. The silhouettes become breath, memory, question. It is not a reconstruction, but a daydream filled with echoes — a living tapestry, where history and its reverse, the beauty of gesture and the fragility of absent voices, intertwine.
Through this poetic device, our shared heritage resonates differently. The conquest of 1066, beyond the clash of arms, becomes a crossroads: between peoples, languages, narratives. This shadow theater does not judge; it questions. It illuminates what the image retains, what silence prolongs, what the shadow reveals.

Weaving the shadow means welcoming the complexity of the past in the oblique light of the present.

Practical information:
All audiences

Without words
Duration: 10 min

Partnership : Bayeux Tapestry Museum