Guillaume & Harold • Spectacle de Gaëlle Bourges

What if the Bayeux Tapestry became a suspense series worthy of the finest streaming platforms? With its sense of narrative and a savoury art of the unexpected, Gaëlle Bourges stages the clash for the English crown between William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, and Harold Godwinson – a proto-streaming epic to devour as a family, without moderation!

On stage, two performers take hold of a treasure of heritage: the Bayeux Tapestry. But here there is no museum and no display case – History comes to life with three pieces of cardboard and a healthy dose of imagination. Enough to take children and grown-ups alike into this reimagined medieval serial, funny and inventive. With a mischievous humour, the dancers unroll the 70 metres of the famous embroidery as if they were chaining together the episodes of a TV series: hurried heroes, express battles, a playful narrator and, to close the whole thing, a song by ABBA – because after all, queens deserve honouring just as much as kings!

In keeping with a show that pairs text with images to make History and its representation accessible at children's eye level, without watering down either the dramatic woes of the plot or its outcome, Gaëlle Bourges's artistic "deconstruction" continues on its way, in contact with the history of art and its most eloquent forms, while injecting a welcome critical discourse. Marie Plantin, Sceneweb

Presented with the Playground festival, organised by the Rencontres chorégraphiques internationales de Seine-Saint-Denis.

Around the show

Parent/child workshop: making stage objects and props (WED. 18 NOV. 2026 | 3pm–5pm)

Duration: 2 hours

For children aged 6 and up and their parents

Price: €10

Booking recommended

This parent/child workshop is designed as a playful immersion in the visual and scenic world of Gaëlle Bourges's Guillaume & Harold. Through making and moving objects and silhouettes out of cardboard, discover how simple materials – cardboard, kraft paper or plastic sheeting – can become material for telling stories and creating images in motion. The workshop's content revolves around the Bayeux Tapestry, a major source of inspiration for Guillaume & Harold.