The play opens in the living room of Russ and Bev, a middle-aged, married white couple on a Saturday afternoon in September 1959. They currently live in Clybourne Park, a middle-class neighborhood northwest of central Chicago. Onstage is the living room, with front door access and a fireplace with an oak mantelpiece. Attached to this room is a dining area with a swinging door leading to the kitchen. There is also a staircase leading to a second floor, and a door down to the basement.

The stage dressing revealsthat Bev and Russ are in the process of moving. Russ sits in the living room in a pajama shirt, chinos, and no shoes, reading a National Geographic and eating ice cream. He listens to soft music on a radio. Bev enters, carrying a cardboard box. Bev asks Russ if he's going to eat the entire carton, to which he replies that it's "going to waste" (7).

Their hired maid, Francine, a black woman in her 30s, also enters. She and Bev discuss packing kitchenware, and Bev offers her a chafing dish, which Francine declines. She exits and Bev and Russ begin a jokey conversation about the origin of the word Neapolitan, as well as correct terminology for other nationalities.