Section 1

Megan Terry's play Calm Down Mother consists of only one act, but it is separated by different sections, during which the three female characters change roles. In the first section, the three woman are clustered, so as "to suggest a plant form," the stage directions dictate. They are listening to a tape, which recounts the beginning of life outside of the oceans. Woman One states that she is Margaret Fuller (1810-1850), a nineteenth-century transcendentalist who has been credited with beginning the feminist movement in the United States. Woman One declares that she accepts the universe.

The two remaining women respond that she had better for "Carlyle said that you had better," making a reference possibly, to Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), a Scottish historian and critic who promoted a strict and authoritarian form of government. Woman One declares that her father supported her "not as a living plaything, but...