Inhabiting a different persona can show us much about the lives of others.

• The Monterey Museum of Art-La Mirada is now showing 55 contemporary paintings for the museum’s 55th anniversary. Up the street, Monterey Peninsula College Art Gallery (980 Fremont St.) presents its biennial MPC Art Students: All Media Exhibit 2014. It’s made up of works from 55 of their student artists. Coincidence? Ask them at the show’s introduction 12:30-2pm Thursday (1pm for gallery talk). 646-3060.

• MMA-La Mirada has been getting a lot of play lately. But don’t count the Pacific Street (559 Pacific St.) museum out just yet. It’s been waiting for its turn to shine again, which will be June 6 when they unveil new art exhibits by Jules Tavernier and Malin Lager. Until then, it’s free to view the permanent collection there. 372-5477, www.montereyart.org.

• Monterey Peninsula College Theatre Company is doing The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, a goofy, playful musical that pokes at and deflates the obsessive and competitive nature of spelling bees and parents’ projections of their hopes and fears onto their kids. It’s got laughs g-a-l-o-r-e and audience interaction in an improv segment in which anyone is invited to come onstage to compete in the bee. It’s directed by Gary Bolen and plays on the Morgan Stock Main Stage 7:30pm Thursday-Saturday and 2pm Sunday, $10-$25, 646-4213.

• CSUMB’s Environmental Media Arts students go north to the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History (705 Front St., Santa Cruz) for an exhibition and film screening. It’s happening 6:30pm Friday as a complement to the museum’s Planet Ord art exhibit by Enid Baxter Ryce (who is my wife – you go, sweetie!) and revolves around the ecology and history of Fort Ord as part of the Cal Humanities War Comes Home Initiative. The students will have an encore 6pm Monday at CSUMB’s Cinematic Arts studio (6th Avenue, Seaside), where amazing things go down all the time  – like on Tuesday, at 8pm, when Welcome to the Wonderland II screens work by Cinematic Arts animation students. Film school: It’s not just for bored rich kids anymore.

• Local author L.C. Wright has published his fourth book, Connections: The Devil’s Door, a mystery/suspense novel set in Carmel Valley with inroads to the history of Esselen peoples. A summary reads: “With the help of her shaman spirit, Deputy Sheriff Tristan Badger races to save a young girl and forever close the Devil’s Door.” He signs at River House Books (208 The Crossroads, Carmel, 626-2665) 3pm Sunday.