PitchWhite Productions began legally in 2021, but didn’t actually achieve a production until 2023, and there’s a story to go with it.

Lochie Daniel was toying around with the idea of a play while bored out of his mind in year 11 maths class. A concept grew into a script, a dream turned into a design, and an idea became a reality over the summer of 2021. Nestled away in the Hopgood Theatre as a part of the Fringe season, Lochie produced his first ever play, ‘A Second Chance to say Goodbye’. The cast was comprised mostly of school friends, the set was stolen from around his home, and no one will ever know where that shopping trolley came from… Lochie looks back on the show stating “To be honest… it wasn’t a very good show, but it was the starting point of what came to be”. The main thing that came emerged from the production, was the identity created; albeit for insurance purposes, but it served itself well shortly after as Lochie began working straight away on his second show. This is where PitchWhite Productions comes in.

The name PitchWhite stems from a short but humorous moment in the town of Brighton, Hobart, roughly 2010, when Lochie was out the back with his father cooking a BBQ for dinner. (More standing by as moral support). To fill the void of the conversation, Lochie looks up to the sky which was still lit by the sun, but covered inch to inch in dense white clouds, and exclaims “Wow the sky is pitch white tonight”. His father found this to be a rather amusing remark and took the opportunity to proudly flag his son’s logical reasoning and deduction, that accepting the term pitch black to mean a very dark shade of black, must therefore make the word “pitch” a description of how colourful a colour is… This of course isn’t true, however Lochie was around seven and didn’t know any better. As soon as it was suggested as a name for a theatre company, it stuck.

PitchWhite soon began it’s endeavour into it’s first show titled “In The Timeless Walls”. For some reason it was agreed to make it a two and a half hour long show with five alternate endings each about 20 minutes long that the audience decide upon, a full suite of physical theatre movements to a fully original score made by a Melbourne composer that would be played by a live orchestra… and to be fair it was all going okay, until COVID decided to have it’s fun and cancel the show two days before opening. PitchWhite also began it’s journey with a co-producer alongside Lochie, Ally Gum, who tackled most of the administrative and HR side of things, sourcing crew, liaising with the theatre, grant hunting, and the important things like organising the cast party! She has since moved on to her own pursuits, but the mark she left on the company was immeasurable to it’s success.

After the devastating emotional and financial disruption Timeless Walls left, Lochie’s mum bought him a LEGO set to cheer him up, he built said LEGO set which did in fact cheer him up, and he moved on to the next project. Which was aptly titled… In The Timeless Walls! This however was a full script re-write, a full redesign, and a much more affordable project. It successfully staged at the Star Theatres in 2023, being the first PitchWhite Productions show. It was well received to audiences, even if no one could figure out what actually happened at the end, but did still prove that Lochie was very much experimenting with the artform. The second iteration of the show did not stop Lochie from being ambitious however, and maintained the fully original score concept and physical theatre, which was tenaciously achieved by Adelaide’s Chloe Short, who Lochie still holds a close friendship with to this day. He also made a contraption to rain water on an actor in the finale, which may have given poor Malcolm a heart attack, but worked really well!

Lochie began a subset of PitchWhite that he uses to create and source sets and props for groups all over South Australia, since starting with FUPAS’s ‘Almost, Maine’, he’s created scenery for over 40 productions, including for schools, respected community groups, growing amateur groups, films, festival stands, and mini concerts. He aims to prove to the world that good looking, high quality set, can be done on a budget, and that if you’re genuine and passionate enough about the art, you can pull off something amazing and cheap.

Lochie and Ally ventured out to create Loc’ally Theatr. (Look at the name carefully…) which served as a company to create non-original works through. The inaugural piece was chosen to be Andrew Bovell’s “Things I Know to be True”, which staged in the round at the Parks Theatre in the 2024 Fringe season. They found some top quality actors to embody the roles, and even had Lochie’s partner play a fully original score written by Jenna Matulick on the keyboard throughout the show. Andrew Bovell himself had some nice things to say about the production too! From here, Ally stepped out of the admin position, and took on an acting role in PitchWhite’s 2024 show before departing from the company.

Since then, Lochie has written three shows, and produced seven. Two of those produced being from a yearly project he created to find playwrights from all across Australia to send him unproduced scripts. Two Melbourne playwrights have had the opportunity so far to have one of their own works staged, that was Querencia Calling in 2025, and Only Human in 2026. Loc’ally did one more production, When we Dead Awaken in 2025, before going on a hiatus to rebrand to Perspective Arts Theatre Company. Perspective staged a very successful production of WIT at the newly refurbished Hopgood Theatre, directed by the award winning Harry Dewar. Lochie wrote and produced original works titled “When the Blue Shirt goes on” - 2024, “A Rock in the Limbus” - 2026, “Fetch the Final Hours” - 2026, the latter of which being featured in the Stirling Player’s One Act Festival.

A Rock in the Limbus was a bump in the road for PitchWhite, as things leading up to the production were going eerily smoothly, one couldn’t have been blamed for foreseeing the calamity to come. As opening night hits, the audience half full and everyone backstage ready to go, the tech falls apart. The show starts with the wrong cues, repeated cues, missing cues, out of sync cues, miss-timed cues, and a disheartened producer. The show persisted, as did the actors. Everything technical continued to fall apart numerous times to the point where the Act 1 finale was performed under fluorescent house lights. On top of the disaster, one of the 3 actors was unwell, thus there was a replacement reading the role off a script. During the interval, a unanimous decision was made to cancel the rest of the evening. They came back the following night with everything polished and shined, ready to roar, and the night was ecstatic. The whole ordeal got the attention of Adelaide thespian, Peter Goers, who wrote a warm-hearted article about the show in the local newspaper.

PitchWhite, and by extension, Lochie Daniel, has had a formidable and treacherous beginning to the theatre scene, but they move on with vigour and passion. To tell original Australian stories and change lives is a prospect that one faulty opening night or rebrand drama couldn’t step in front of as easily. PitchWhite continues to develop and produce authentic and artistic theatre around South Australia, with the possibility of taking things interstate in the near future.