RACINE, WI (CBS 58) -- In a small Racine workshop, foam, fabric and a little imagination—turn into something that feels surprisingly real. Scott Lema is the creator behind the genius chaos of Oddly Incorporated, a production company in Downtown Racine. 

Currently, Scott is working on creating puppets for Over Our Head Players upcoming show, Salmon-a-Rama: The Sketch Comedy Puppet Musical that Your Children Won’t Understand. The show opens on May 8th, 2026. 

CBS 58 Morning Anchor sat down with Lema and learned how he got into making puppets in the first place. 

"I've been doing theater my whole life, and I was a prop guy for a lot of years. So as a prop guy, you end up making whatever weird stuff, you know, whatever doesn't fall into a department gets thrown into props. So, you're making all these weird things and things that don't exist. So, you know, after years of just repurposing and adjusting everything, and you start to make, you know, make them from scratch. And at that point, you just keep going," explained Lema. 

Lema says it can be a challenge to figure out how the puppet creation will do the actions needed on stage.

"So, when you build a character, you got to make sure you have to know what it's going to do on stage. This puppet has to blow apart in act two, this one has to hang on to something that's a huge consideration, if they have to hold anything all of a sudden, a bunch of build, God forbid, something has to blink. So, it's all these different things, and then you start pulling them together. And the way I go about it is a little more organic. I work from patterns, flat patterns, like clothes that you then fold and glue together and create three-dimensional forms. And so, I work from some basic patterns, and then I then just sort of randomly deviate from that to make new shapes," said Lema. 

Lema shared a few of his processes with us, as he built the character, Gertie. 

"There's so many ways to do it, you know, just the eyes, my eyes, right now, I'm, I made these little, took measuring spoons into some silicone and poured resin so that we get these flat little eyes. And I like that right now. But, you know, a lot of people use ping pong balls, or I have some weird cat's eyes on one of the guys, because I want him to look glossy and crazy and just different, so he doesn't look so 'muppety'," explained Lema. 

He says everything starts to come together when you add color. 

"As you start putting it together with the color, something starts to come out. And you can sort of edge it, whichever way you want to take it. And it's sort of a collaboration between foam and chance and me. And then we try and get it pushed into one shape. And then I send it to rich or Anne, and they say, No, not that. And then I cry," said Lema. 

Rich Smith, Managing Artistic Director and Anne Mollerskov, Assistant Managing Director, for Over Our Head Players joined us to speak about their group. 

"So, we're a theater company. We're in our 34th season. We were founded in a bar, actually, in George's Bar in downtown Racine back in the early 90s, and then we moved into our own space on Sixth Street, The Sixth Street Theater where we are today. Doing anything new, you know, or different, kind of puts us in the over our head frame, right? And that's sort of our mission, you know, that's, that's what we want to do. And when we do things like, like this show Salmon-a-Rama," explained Smith. 

"It's about Racine. It's about Salmon-a-Rama, which is a fishing competition that was born in the 1970s has been around and is incredibly popular. Our show adds a lot of the essence of that. It adds a lot of local humor. A lot of our characters are love letters, homages to funny characters and figures that everybody kind of knows and concepts that people are familiar with if they grew up in Racine. I play Gertie Olson. And Gertie is a middle aged, you know, she's lived a life, you know, but she still has optimism," said Mollerskov. 

Lema continued the interview with CBS 58 as he built Gertie. 

"So, we're going to be putting on some hair for her, which is just a felting wool. And then we're going to be we have her eyes on already, but we're going to be setting her pupils, which is sort of where they come to life, you know or not, depending on if we get it right. When you get those little simplifying moments, and it's and you just pop through, it is about the best thing you can have. I go through razor blades like crazy, and razor blades go through me like crazy. But you're doing a lot of cutting. You I'm getting into more carving now, which is using the old electric carving knife from Thanksgiving to carve blocks of foam. Rather than using glues and adhesives and stuff like that, I'm just felting them on," explained Lema. 

"I've known Scott for a while, but back when we first talked about doing Moby Dick puppet musical, we're like, oh, how can we do this? How can we do that? And Scott says, rich, you can do anything you want with puppets. Scott is like...he's like a kid. We'll sit down and talk about anything from, you know, how are we going to create this, this boat, you know, that's got to sail across Lake Michigan. Or how are we going to create this large salmon that has to take on this human God like form? And you see his wheels turn, you know? And he'll throw something at me, and then I'll throw something back and then I'll walk in his shop and see something, and just go, yeah, he's got it nailing. It's big fun," said Smith. 

Anne says she's never seen anything like Scott's work. 

"Scott has such a unique approach and a unique look to his to his puppet creations. It's a little bit of a mixture of Muppets. It's a little bit of a mixture of sometimes, you know, we've done everything from the felted puppets to the fleece puppets, to the paper bag puppets to just wild creations. He makes these seagulls that are just basically giant. Well, they're made out of pool noodles, right? So, they, the way they talk is that their heads actually split apart like this on a stick. He has such a creative and humorous way of making these puppets come to life. I love that," expressed Mollerskov. 

Lema says one of the best parts is seeing his crazy creations take center stage. 

"It's really fun when you know to see your stuff on stage. One of the fun things about Sixth Street is in the booth. When I work, if I'm working in the booth, you can watch the audience, which I've never been able to do it in quite that way before. So, I can see everybody on stage. But right there, I can see everybody watching it on stage, and just some of the reactions when people come out, you know, like when Swampus would come out every night, I had to make sure I paid attention to the cue that I had coming up, because I just wanted to stare at all the people just getting joy. You know, it's really fun to see people just get their expectations blown out a little bit," said Lema. 

And all agree that there's a magical connection to the audience when puppets are involved. 

"When somebody puts a puppet on their hand and starts moving around the way that everybody else in that room starts reacting to what's going on. You know, even I, when I put that on for a second and I move the face, there's a split second in my brain where I'm just like, it's people, and I'm, you're completely fooled, and people just start reacting to it, you know, completely autonomously. And it's just such a great brain. It's good science to see," said Lema. 

"It takes a lot of getting used to, because the puppets, even though they're maybe a couple, two, three pounds, after a while, with your arm at that angle, it gets pretty it gets pretty exhausting. Your arm gets pretty tired. We're the style of theater we do has a lot of interaction with the audience, so we tend to break or bend the fourth wall a lot of times and really, kind of get into their personal space sometimes. And it's, just so great because then they give you that added extra element to the show that you wouldn't normally get without them," said Mollerskov.

"The moment I knew it was going to be fun was puppets on your hand, and all of a sudden, you would just make your puppet look at a person. And when a human being makes eye contact with a puppet, I can't explain it, but I knew I had the power of connection with these little eyes that Scott created with a person who was just, you know, staring down this puppet. It was, you became real. You know, the puppet became real. It became human. And just opens up this whole world of fun and what you can get away with as both an actor and a puppeteer," explained Smith. 

Lema says collaborating with Over Our Head Players is a true joy. 

"To work with them is really something nice when you can see something that you had a big part from the beginning, you know, but the more you do it, here's the sappy part, the more that you do it like that, the more you realize that it's still, you know, how important everybody else's part is. And I think that's what's the greatest thing about theater is that artists have to work together and bring their skills together, you know, painters and seamstress and actors and writers and all you know, and the technicians and everybody has to come together and do what they really love doing. Right when we're at the theater, everybody is happy, even if they're exhausted, because you're doing what you want to do. And I think that's something that you know is a guess. It's a dream come true, but you have to realize it when you're in it, right? I mean, I think it's just doing what I'm supposed to do, you know. And so that's pretty good," said Lema. 

Salmon-A-Rarma, the sketch comedy puppet musical that your children won't understand: An original sketch comedy parody musical written by Rich Smith and Over Our Head players. Anne says there will be lots of local humor and laughs. So grab your cheese curds, because it's about to be a lot of fun! If this were a movie, cast members say it would be rated PG-13. 

Anne released the following summary of the show to CBS 58 News: 

It's "The Big One". The show is a love letter to Racine's history and culture around the biggest fishing competition around, established in 1973...and also the movie Jaws. It's 1975 and Racine is gearing up for Salmon-A-Rama. But! swimmers and fishermen start turning up mauled by a mysterious beast. Gil Gilson, local Salmon fishing hero and haunted war vet, suspects these were not just "boating accidents", and that the attacks were caused by a killer salmon on the lose in Lake Michigan. Gil's high school sweetheart, Gertie Olsen, kringle lady and single mother to Guppy Olsen, is attempting to sell her newly invented deep fried cheese curds at Salmon-A-Rama, but makes a deal with some shady characters, including Scottish entrepreneur, Angus McCulvers for the funds to go into business, but Angus secretly wants the delicious recipe for himself! Will Gil save Gertie's curds and Racine from the man eating killer Salmon? Find out at Salmon-A-Rama! 

Salmon-a-Rama opens on May 8th, 2026. It then runs for four weekends. Tickets sell out quickly, so make sure to buy them if you'd like to see Scott's work. The Sixth Street Theater is located at 318 6th Street in Racine, Wisconsin.