Mohammed Shaheen

Muhammad Shahen is a Lighting and Sound Designer specializing in creating sound and lighting environments for theatre and performing arts. Based in Sakhnin, Shahen studied Arts at the Zefat Academic College with a specialization in Music before graduating in Sound Engineering. Shahen later discovered Lighting Design and started exploring this medium through which he learned to convey the vision of prominent directors and artists with whom he collaborated on different projects.

Along with Palestinian musician and director Nabil Azar, he created an inventive atmosphere to retrace the life of renowned Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish in the 2024 musical Al ‘Acheq (The Lover) performed, among other venues, as part of the 25th Carthage Theatre Days Festival in Tunis. During the same year, Muhammad Shahen teamed up with Palestinian dancer and choreographer Nur Garabli to design the lighting setting of Arabesqua, a dance performance featuring five women aiming to reappropriate the Levantine traditional Dabke through their new narratives. Shahen is also working alongside with Palestinian performer and choreographer Shaden Abu Elasal. Within her Shaden Dance Company, Nazareth, Shahen created the scenic lighting environment for her contemporary dance performance Feathers, highlighted during the 15th Edition of the Arab Theatre Festival hosted in Muscat, Oman, 2025.

Shahen experiments with creative digital sound and light to enhance the production’s storytelling and build inventive worlds onstage. His other recent projects include lighting design for Buyut, directed in 2022 by Palestinian actor and stage director Kamel el Basha; for A Life Made Of Wood, a theatrical performance based on Sheikha Helawy’s short story and performed by Maya Omaya Keesh (Al Saraya Theatre, Jaffa); Breakfast with the President, directed in 2024 by musician and director Nabil Azar (Aljawal Theatre, Sakhnin; Fringe Ensemble, Nazareth).