HELP : Church Event

[Creative_one]

Hi Everyone,
I have a church event ( the event is going to be a musical & besides that the older youth are going to dance , drama or something) coming up that gives me the opportunity to experience first hand for the first time. ( photographing people).
The event is going to take place at sugar land city hall) outside at 5pm - 6pm. Here's the problem : it gets dark
( i seen the city hall at nite . It has some spot lights but i don't think there's enough light there to get really good pics taken fast with out having the exposure to take a long time. & i don't know if i should just a flash cause i don't want to have the kids mess up in a dance during the musical because i used a flash.?.? what should i do?) like around 5:45pm or so & i have photographed different things ( sky- trees-streets & sun sets) at night before & i know that at one point i would have to wipe out my tripod.
But how do i photograph a musical at night? any ideas? Any tips? guide lines?
I appreciate all the responses & tips to this question!
Thanks so much.

 

[rallysman]

What gear do you have? I was able to do a dance shoot that had very low lighting with a fairly fast lens (2.8). I used shutter priority @ about 1/125 with the highest ISO that I could get away with. If it was still too dark I'd bump up the exposure compensation. They were still a bit dark, but this is completely without spotlights. It was some floods on the side with gels covering the lights in this pic...

 

[Chaitika]

Is it possible for you to have access to the stage with some of the scene lighting before the show starts? The first time I shot a concert, I had access to the stage with some of the lighting prior to the show and I simply tried different settings until I had a good sense of how to capture the props. After that, the rest was fairly straightforward.