MARLUMOR 

is dedicated to producing family-friendly, Broadway-style, live entertainment shows in Western North Carolina featuring local singers, musicians, dancers, actors, youth performers, and visiting guest artists. Founders Mario & Lucinda Morin, a husband/wife creative team with over 30 years of showbiz experience and more than 13,000 live performances to their credit, are happy to live, create, and dream in Marion, NC, supporting and sustaining meaningful relationships with WNC's diverse community of dedicated instructors and gifted performers. Bringing talented artists together to celebrate music, dance, and comedy is the heartfelt mission of MARLUMOR. 

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- Producer/Choreographer

Lucinda Morin

Lucinda was born and raised in Taylorsville, North Carolina and began her dance training at age 6.  She studied with Ann Freeman and Jackie Freeman Olson in Hickory, NC and attended the NC Governor's School and UNC-Greensboro.  Lucinda, a former Radio City Rockette, booked her first professional job at age 19.  She was the featured dancer at Alabama Theatre in Myrtle Beach, where she met and married her dance partner, Mario Morin.  She performed at Opryland USA, Bally's Casino in Atlantic City, American Music Theatre in Lancaster, PA, House of Blues in Los Angeles and Myrtle Beach, on Holland America and Celebrity Cruise Lines, with Moranz Entertainment in Charleston, SC, and in numerous commercials, TV appearances, and voiceovers.  In addition to 28 years as a professional performer, Lucinda is also an accomplished choreographer, with credits including fourteen original revue shows and musicals over 7 years at the Savannah Theatre in Savannah, GA, The Ultimate Variety Show and Christmas at the Smoky Mountain Opry for Fee-Hedrick Entertainment in Tennessee.  She has served as a judge and master class instructor for regional and national dance competitions for over 20 years. She is thrilled to be in her fourth season producing and choreographing shows with Mario. 

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- Producer/Director

Mario Morin

Mario is a native of San Antonio, Texas.  He has performed across the US and beyond for the past 32 years. A self-taught artist who got his start as a break-dancer on a weekly tv show, Mario got his first taste of showbiz as a competitor on Star Search.  His career in musical theatre began at age 18 when he was cast as a dancer at Sea World of Texas.  He then joined Opryland USA as a gymnast and dancer. Mario was a featured dancer with the Alabama Theatre in Myrtle Beach and with the American Music Theatre in Lancaster, PA, and he was the featured comedian/singer/dancer/impersonator at the Savannah Theatre in Savannah, GA.  His credits include Little Shop of Horrors (Seymour), A Chorus Line (Mark), Grease (Sonny), Circo Magnifico (bungee aerialist), contracts with Celebrity and Holland America Cruise Lines, Country Tonite in Pigeon Forge, Calvin Gilmore's Carolina Opry, industrials for Proctor & Gamble, Dr. Pepper, and AutoZone. Mario was a featured dancer and comedian at the Smoky Mountain Opry in Tennessee and in Let the Good Times Roll in Charleston, SC.  He is also an accomplished commercial/TV and voiceover actor and a choreographer and judge for regional and national dance competitions. He is looking forward to his fourth season producing and directing shows with his wife and dance partner of 21 years, Lucinda. 

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Q & A with Mario & Lucinda

How did you get into showbiz?

Lucinda: I took my first dance class when I was in first grade. The instructor let us do cartwheels at the end of class, which sealed the deal! I was born into a family of musicians and music lovers, and I grew up training in dance studios and dreaming of being on stage. When I was in college, a production company held an audition on campus. I landed my first gig, packed my car, and followed the dream. Performing was the only thing I wanted to do. Mario: My mom was a flamenco dancer, and there was always music playing in our house. I started out breakdancing. A local dance teacher saw me and said she needed a guy on her performing team, so I joined them. I also danced on a regional TV show called Jammin- kind of like American Bandstand- with my high school friends. I booked a summer gig right after graduation and had a blast. The shows combined comedy, dancing, and music- all the things I loved.



Give us the scoop on you and the company.

Mario: I was born and raised in San Antonio, Texas, and married into North Carolina over 20 years ago. Lucinda: I grew up in Taylorsville, North Carolina, in Alexander County. We met and got married in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, while performing at the Alabama Theatre. Lucinda: We were blessed to perform full-time for about 3 decades, much longer than the average professional dancer. 2014 was our last year performing 7 to 12 shows a week. During that season, we started writing shows and paying more attention to the production and marketing end of everything. Mario: We knew that creating and producing our own show was the next step. Our mentors and former directors, Brad & Jennifer Moranz, encouraged us to go for it. They produce shows in Charleston, South Carolina, and they've given us great advice over the years. Our parents and close family and friends weren't surprised that we'd decided to do our own show. They're pretty used to our crazy showbiz life, and they've been supportive since day one. We live in Marion, in an area of North Carolina that has always embraced live music and dance, and it feels good to be part of a community that's very supportive of live entertainment.



Your musicians really bring down the house. What's the story on the band?

Mario: Our music director and arranger, Aaron Price, has been performing in and around Asheville since 1997. He's fantastic on the keys and has been with us since the first show, along with Kent Spillman our drummer, our guitarist Miguel Cancino, and Ryan Crabtree, our bassist. Kent's an established instructor and performer in Asheville. Ryan lives in Black Mountain and plays with multiple bands locally and across the Southeast. We've known Miguel, our guitarist, for over a decade. He's originally from Santiago, Chile, and is currently doing session work and playing gigs in Nashville, Tennessee. Lucinda's brother Reese Land plays trumpet in the show, and his wife Paola Manrique-Land, who is originally from Guayaquil, Ecuador, plays violin. They live in Louisville, Kentucky, where he's a music professor at the University of Louisville and she teaches strings for the elementary, middle, and high schools in Bardstown, Kentucky. Jonathan Cole, our saxophonist, is a local, too. Having a great group of musicians on board is a priority for both of us, and we love having them on stage for the entire show! We're fortunate to have a community of phenomenal players here in western North Carolina, and it helps to have family and friends jumping in to play, too! Our audiences love live music. It's a signature element we plan to have in every show.



You've got a live band on stage, dancers, kids, and a partridge in a pear tree in this show! How do you put it all together?

Mario: Well, it's just the 2 of us creating, casting, directing, choreographing, marketing, costuming, and designing everything. Our MD, Aaron, starts working on song arrangements a couple months in advance. We accept performer audition submissions by email, and we have one live audition each year. By the end of October we have our cast, band, and crew under contract. Rehearsals for Christmas start in late October, and we go full-steam until showtime.



The theater looks like Christmas morning! That must take a lot of hands.

Lucinda: In addition to the local crew we hire for the shows, we've got dozens of family members, college buddies, our seamstress Angela, co-workers, friends, neighbors, and our church family pitching in to help us backstage, in the lobby, and anywhere else we need them. We have family and friends of our cast and band helping on show days, too. Most stick around until load-out is finished at midnight. It's a hard-working village of folks, and we love them all. By the next week, we're back to our day jobs and already dreaming up the next show. It's a happy cycle!



A big show like this doesn't come cheap. How do you make it happen?

Mario: It's not easy! We both work in the healthcare field full time, and outside those hours, I'm also a photographer. We judge dance competitions on the weekends in the spring, and we teach master classes and workshops when we have time. We pray a lot, too! Working to pay for our dream, for something we both love, is just part of the story. We hope that ticket sales will cover our expenses each year, but we're going to do the shows anyway. Discovering local talent, and putting all the elements together to make a great show that represents the spirit of Christmas, that's our true joy.



What's your favorite part of the process?

Lucinda: We have several! Calling the new cast members to offer them jobs is way up there. We were on the other side of those calls for years, so we remember that excitement- all the nerves and the joy. It's a wonderful feeling for us, especially with our younger performers, to be part of their careers and hopefully inspire them to pursue their dreams. Seeing the choreography transition from just ideas in my head onto the dancers in rehearsal, then to the stage is another favorite. Our dancers have to learn a lot of movement in a very short span of time, but they learn faster with each rehearsal. I love the moment when their muscle memory takes over, so they're dancing full out with feeling! For both of us, just being in the theatre with the audience, our crew, the cast and band, and our family and friends during the finale of the show is overwhelming, but we try to soak it all in. Building shows with a circle of people who believe in us and believe in what we're doing is incredible, and humbling, and a ton of fun. Talking with our audience members after the show is the icing on the cake! We do our best to include a little something for everyone, and it's wonderful to hear that we made folks laugh, or sang their favorite song, or made their Christmas a little more joyful. It really is a dream come true for us.



"In every community, there is work to be done."

Beyond the shows, the Morins are committed to supporting dynamic local, WNC, national, and international non-profit organizations.  Mario and Lucinda appreciate the time and dedication these groups devote to ending hunger and homelessness, improving education, teaching and inspiring young artists, discovering cures for diseases, and making the world a safer, better place.

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McDowell County Schools https://www.mcdowell.k12.nc.us/  delivers excellence in education where students are engaged in collaboration, communication, and innovation. Donations for school food pantries and meal programs and donations of volunteer time are always needed. 

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New Hope of McDowell https://newhopeofmcdowell.org/ provides services that support, empower, and protect victims of domestic violence and sexual assault.


MANNA Foodbank   https://www.mannafoodbank.org/how-you-can-help/donate/  

serves communities across 16 counties of WNC, providing food to people experiencing

hunger in our 6,434 square mile region. 

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Eliada   https://www.eliada.org/donate-today is a non-profit agency founded in 1903 

which serves over 600 children in Western North Carolina each year.

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American Cancer Society https://donate3.cancer.org/  is on a mission to free the world from cancer. Donations go toward research for a cure, support for patients, and spreading the word about cancer prevention. 

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Montford Park Players https://www.montfordparkplayers.org/ has presented the works of William Shakespeare free of charge to audiences in Western North Carolina for the past 40 years. They provide quality productions of classic drama in an authentic outdoor setting. 

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The NAACP's Legal Defense and Educational Fund https://www.naacpldf.org/ is America’s premier legal organization fighting for racial justice. Through litigation, advocacy, and public education, LDF seeks to fulfill the promise of equality for all Americans. 

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Foothills Food Hub  https://www.foothillsfoodhub.org/ is a project of the McDowell County Local Food Advisory Committee. Through its commercial kitchen, food storage facility, multiple pantries, and weekly deliveries, the Hub actively and effectively addresses the community's need for food.. 

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