I Only Need Three Walls These Days

I have a brain like flypaper that catches onto things indiscriminately and never lets them go. While I was in bed with my bowl of cereal this morning, I had the most random memory. I was in a musical called Once On This Island my senior year of high school, and we did something ridiculous like two weeks' worth of matinees for schoolchildren.

There was -- of COURSE -- a smoke machine effect at some point in the production that set off the smoke alarm during one of these matinees. So we're standing outside, the schoolchildren huddled together, the cast bunched together near the stage door. And we're goofing off, joking, pushing and shoving, probably making out at random intervals, and then one of the leads swooped over to us.

"Guys. GUYS. Stay in character, okay??"

And we all nodded. Chastened.

I don't know why that cracks me up so much, but it was just so ridiculously EARNEST, as if the theater we were doing which was anything other than (Gemma, back me up on this?), say, mediocre plus? That we somehow thought that letting the fourth wall crumble would have DIRE CONSEQUENCES?