dress the house

present singular third person dresses the house · participle present dressing the house · participle past dressed the house · past dressed the house

1. entertainmentTo position oneself, or others, so as to make the auditorium appear fuller than it really is.

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

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

   2 more examples

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

   1917, Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons, Parliamentary Debates (Hansard), page cccxlvi

   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, […]

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