dress the house

dress the house

English

Verb

dress 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, […]