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A few things come to mind. For one, you'll have to figure out how to amplify all of those monitors, and get the signal from the mixing console to all those amps - i.e., a house mix, not a monitor mix.
Next, the speakers on the stage will be hitting the listener's ears before the house speakers, so you may have a delay issue. It won't be an issue for the people under the main speakers, but for people that can hear the mains plus the filler monitors, it might be a problem.
Hopefully you can set things up ahead of time and do some listening testing. I would try standing under the mains where you expect the people to be; start with only the main speakers running (playing a CD or something), then add volume to the filler speakers via the amplifier gains until they blend. I.e., you should be able to hear both, with the fillers slightly dominating. (The fill speakers should not overpower the mains, otherwise they are no longer "fill!") This approach will also hopefully cut down on the possible delay problem: Moving slowly back from the stage towards the regular seating, hopefully by the time you get to the position where the mains come in strong, they will dominate and the fillers won't be heard. Once you have your relative levels set, hopefully then the main house master send will turn everything up and down uniformly. To make it easy on yourself, I suggest doing this set-up with a single fill speaker. Once you get its level in relation to the mains lined out, you can use pink noise and an SPL meter to level-match the additional fill speakers to the first.
A few more details: Use matching monitors, if possible. If they have rectangular horns (say, 6" x 15" or something), turn them so that the wide part of the horn is horizontal. This way you get wider horizontal dispersion, which in turn means you'll need fewer monitors. Depending on the particular monitor, this may mean standing it upright. Make sure the fill speakers, or at least their horns, are high enough to be over the audience's heads. Otherwise the frontmost audience members will soak up the sound and those 10-15 ft. back won't be hearing much.
Good luck and let us know how it turns out!
Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt
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