dress the house

dress the house (third-person singular simple present dresses the house, present participle dressing the house, simple past and past participle dressed the house)

1. (theater) To position oneself, or others, so as to make the auditorium appear fuller than it really is.
   • 1917, Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons, Parliamentary Debates (Hansard), page cccxlvi:

     […] to pay this tax through inviting a certain class of the public, who are always invited, to theatres of standing to dress the house.

   • 1931, Bernard Shaw, Our Theatre in the Nineties, volume 24, page 246:

     […] we critics were not his fellow-guests, but simply deadheads whose business it was to "dress the house" and write puffs.

   • 1979, Lawrence Stern, School and Community Theater Management: A Handbook for Survival:

     The box office in a reserved seat house and the ushers in a non-reserved situation are responsible for dressing the house—that is, seating the audience so as to elicit the maximum response, […]