LIFESTYLE

Geva has ‘Good People’ and Blackfriars has ‘Rappaport’

ROC

The schedule is full this week at Geva Theatre Center, 75 Woodbury Blvd.

Its second mainstage series play, Good People, has previews at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, 8 p.m. Friday and 2 p.m. Saturday, with the official opening at 8 p.m. Saturday. There are also shows at 2 and 7 p.m. next Sunday.

The play by Pulitzer Prize winner David Linday-Abaire and directed by Mark Cuddy, who recently signed a contract to extend his job as Geva’s artistic director until 2020, is about a South Boston single mom, just let go from a job, her struggles and a twist of fate involving an old flame.

Tickets start at $25, and the play runs through Nov. 16. Call (585) 232-4382 or go to gevatheatre.org.

Geva’s Festival of New Theatre also starts this week, with a reading at 7 p.m. Monday of Nora Cole’s Katherine’s Colored Lieutenant. Cole in this play explores the story of her uncle, a Tuskegee airman, and her aunt, a Louisville schoolteacher. Also this week is a conversation at 7 p.m. Friday with with Wendy MacLeod that includes a reading from Women in Jeopardy!, which Geva will premiere in February. This year’s Young Writers Showcase will be at 3 p.m. Saturday and next Sunday, and the Rochester Bake-Off (where five writers take three days to write a Rochester-centric play) is at 7 p.m. next Sunday.

The festival, in the Nextstage, is free, but reservations are required.

Also this week:

• Blackfriars Theatre on Friday opens I’m Not Rappaport, about a Jewish retiree with a wee bit of a tendency to exaggerate and an African-American building superintendent, who spend their afternoons sparring on a park bench. I’m Not Rappaport won a best play Tony and explores “friendship and aging with great characters and lots of laughs,” says John Haldoupis, who is directing the play. The show plays through Nov. 9, with performances this weekend at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. next Sunday. Tickets are $28.50 to $36.50 and available at the theater box office, 795 E. Main St., call (585) 454-1260 or go to Blackfriars.org.