Meet Milky White, the ‘legen-dairy’ cow puppet of ‘Into the Woods’

Into the Woods, written by James Lapine and with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, premiered in San Diego in 1986, in a country amid the AIDS crisis. The Broadway revival happened in 2002, right after the Sept. 11 attacks. In 2022, in the throes of a global pandemic, New York City Center announced that it would stage the musical as part of its “Encores!” series. And now, it’s on a national tour that stops at the Kimmel Cultural Campus’ Miller Theater, April 4-9.

For decades, audiences have drawn joy from the musical’s mishmashing of our childhood fairy tales. Over and over again, we’ve been enchanted by the Baker, his wife, Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Jack, and, most importantly, Milky White, Jack’s ailing cow and his “best friend in the whole world!”

Puppet designer and director James Ortiz grew up in the suburbs of Dallas and that is where he first watched a high school production of the musical. Milky White in that production, Ortiz remembers, “was a sculpture that had wheels on its feet.” A big prop that actors pretended was alive. As older millennial fans who have followed the Tumblr page “Low Budget Milky Whites” would know, this cow, through the years, has gone from being a wooden stool with a head to demonic-looking children in cow suits. Ortiz’s Milky White is a puppet made of corrugated cardboard.

“And she has a little bit of paint peeling off,” said Kennedy Kanagawa, the actor and puppeteer who translates Milky White’s endlessly charming self for the audience. “She is very much quite literally on her last legs. Jack’s whole plot begins with how old and useless Milky is,” he explained.

If there was ever a case to be made for a dying cow puppet, Kanagawa makes it well. “What is so endearing about her is how expressive James designed her face. She just has the sweetest, most pathetic, pitiful expression.” On stage, he creates all of Milky’s movements with two handles “but we’re not going with precision here,” he said. “Because there’s something endearing about the floppy nature of her physical life.”

A floppy cardboard cow with paint peeling off who is also the star of the show. How did that happen?

As a puppet director, Ortiz described his job as “a puppeteer’s acting coach.” “I understand what [Milky] is feeling and what [Kennedy is] trying to access,” he said. “So [I say] ‘Let’s find a way to funnel it through the materials that we have,’ knowing the limitations and therefore setting goals for what she can and can’t do.”

Is Milky White high maintenance, you ask? The puppets were built for the two-week “Encores!” run. “So all of the puppets have gotten makeovers and been reinforced. But Milky White in particular, gets so aggressively used, that she really took a beating,” Kanagawa said. He remembered one time in New York City Center, in the scene where Milky runs away from the Baker’s Wife — “I ran off stage and [actor] Sara Bareilles ran off stage after me. And she’s holding one of Milky White’s ears.” And then there were times when the teats on Milky’s udders kept snapping off. “So we’d walk around in the dark backstage asking ‘Has anyone seen a teat rolling around?’”

“So all of that [is] to say,” Kanagawa added, “James Ortiz ended up making a second Milky White, that was much sturdier.” That is the Milky White 2.0 we see on stage these days though the OG tours along as well, “because you never know.” Even 2.0 almost lost her legs on tour and had to get an emergency surgery during intermission.

Ortiz follows Milky White’s journey on the musical’s Instagram — just the other day she was at Niagara Falls. “I’m very proud of this,” he said, “I’m still very much connected [to the production], but it’s a machine that now knows how to feed itself and take care of itself.” Kanagawa, he said, has been a “dream to work with.” “It was like a dream that he said yes, and I had no idea what heights he would reach from [doing what is essentially] operating a cow.”

The cow isn’t the only puppet Kanagawa maneuvers. There is the Giant’s shoe and Cinderella’s birds for whom Kanagawa also doubles as a ventriloquist. “It’s a really interesting combination of movement theater and finding a different physicality,” he said. “[It’s like] how to be expressive with our bodies and then channeling that through the body of the puppet that we are operating.” It helps, Ortiz points out, that Kanagawa is a “killer singer and dancer.”

Through the many lives of Milky White — on and off stage — and of the musical itself, “it’s just been the most magical experience” for Kanagawa and the entire cast and crew.

When I watched the cast rehearse in a studio in New York’s Times Square, as everyone came together to sing “No One is Alone,” I could see the magic.

“James Lapine once mentioned,” Kanagawa said, “That this show seems to always come around when the world needs it the most.” And, thankfully for us, this time it comes bearing the best cow puppet you’ll ever see.

“Into the Woods” plays the Kimmel Cultural Campus’ Miller Theater, 250 S. Broad St., April 4-9, https://bit.ly/3MjU2c5.