The stage wil be used for all the activities you mentioned like dance, meetings, drama etc.. Since HD cameras are light sensitive I want to setup the best I can. Thanks

What's the size (length, width and height to the ceiling) of the stage as well as the measurements of the room it's in?
What's the distance from the main floor to the stage floor?
Do you have adequate electrical power available if you were to install a pile of 1,000 W. fixtures (say 30 of them)?

Do you live near a major city?
There are a lot of companies who specialize in this.
You could also check out local schools and small theatres for ideas.

Mike

Theatrical lighting and for video some may say are two different animals.
You want to light for the audience primarily. Video can handle too much
light (ND filters and other camera built in functions). You want
even lighting so you don't have deep shadows. If you are performing,
follow spots can be a problem.

Many stages add color pars to correct for the bleached out skin on many
actors. Boarder lights help both the actors and audience.

So, you really need to have a professional lighting company come in as
well as your electrician to look over the entire picture.

EDIT: What about sound? While the electrician is hanging lights, do you need
separate conduit run for sound?

Fluro lights are now pretty much the standard lighting source for TV studios, they'll give you the maxiumum efficiency and that means the least amount of heat for a given amount of light. If you're on a tight budget you can buy some quite good Made in China units complete with DMX control. The Osram Studioline 55W tubes which are available in daylight and tungsten have a CRI of over 90.

If you've got plenty of cash Arrie do some very nice dimmable fluro lights.

If you need spots you can get 150W HMIs from Lupo very cheap at around USD 500. Again very efficient so as little heat as possible but not dimmable.

Bob.

Drama and Dance especially need lighting that can be controlled both in positioning and in brightness. Light is used to focus attention to actors and areas of the stage.

If you are lighting for stage productions, you will not have a problem with getting enough light for your HD camera IMHO.

I suggest taking a trip to your local community theatre and observing the lighting in action. If you ask, maybe you can sit in to a dress rehearsal with the lighting operators.

You do not, however, need all the options that a theatre will have. We have an active drama ministry and we light most stuff very well with eight 750 Watt ellipsoidals (Lekos) and a couple of fresnels. If we had a better electrical service, I'd like to have at least double that capacity.

Especially note how high the lights are in a theatre. They are mounted considerably higher than in most TV studios. As farss notes, DMX control is the way to go. The ability to control light intensity and spread is essential.

If you are in the US, I would enthusiastically recommend Production Advantage http://www.productionadvantageonline.com

Very good prices and willing to spend time on the phone with beginners.

IMHO, I would say lighting for drama and video are very different. I can light a stage for a theatre or a bar but video is tough. It seems that the background becomes more important in video (perhaps because of depth of field?).

As to what equipment to get, there is a LONG laundry list! The size of the stage, truss height, venue size, fly gallery, etc, will determine what equipment you need to get. Unless used for work lights or effect, theatres don't typically use any flourescents - HMI yes, in places.

I would also suggest going to a local theatre. If you ask, they will let you help them. ;) Community theatres usually can use techs and you will get an idea of what you need for your set-up,

Granted fluro lights and even HMI (apart from follow spots and 'wobble' lights) are very rarely used for stage lighting. However Siby has a general purpose stage that's only rarely used for typical stage productions, bit like a school hall. That's why I'm suggesting fluro lights as used for TV studios might be a good choice, sure not much chop for drama but one can always rent the needed spots or whatever for the few times a year that those kind of shows will be staged.
I'm thinking more about general purpose lighting that can be used with no experts on hand to just flood the stage without blinding anyone and at the same time keep the power bill and cooling costs to a minimum. Lamp life isn't a small issue either, not that inkie lamps are expensive but the big ones can make a heck of a bang and are hard to replace unless you know what you're doing. Fluros on the other hand (well the good tubes) will give you around 3,000 hours of light. Still hard to replace but they tend to fade away rather than go bang.

Bob.

edit: Just one other point. It's more than likely this venue will have windows and be used during the day. That gives a very good reason to use daylight fluro lights. Unless the windows can be totally blacked out you'll have light source of differing CT.

The theatre industry standard (if there is such a term) these days seems to be the ETC Source Four fixtures.
Pricing is very reasonable (even in Canada!!) and they come with a wide variety of options including PAR lights.
The theatre program at the community college I work for bought a bunch of them in the past year and our production manager as well as the lighting designers at our casino and local theatre companies speak very highly of them.
As has been suggested though, bring in someone who knows what they're doing to help you out.

Mike